i got a lot of stuff done today, but one of them was not writing in my blog. oh well. more tomorrow.
friday of the fez and other stuff
#FezFriday with Stanley, who is suspicious of hats with brims, but has no problem with my fez, because it doesn’t have a brim.
i had another person who ordered $5.00 worth of incense, and then paid a $6.50 shipping charge. i sent it to them, because they’re from california and i don’t have any reason not to – a lot of times people will order a small amount of incense and then request that i ship it out of the country, at which point i usually tell them that they either need to order more, or buy it locally, because the shipping is usually a lot more – but at the same time, i have the shipping rates pretty clearly posted, so people don’t have an excuse if they order domestically and end up paying more for shipping than for their incense.
snow is mostly gone, but is still there in dirty piles along the edges of the roads. it’s currently 46°r; F and raining on and off, so what remains of the snow should be completely gone by tomorrow.
it’s that season again…
it’s the season of senseless, mindless overindulgence. it’s the season of fake good times, fake cheer, fake “good tidings of comfort and joy to men of good will,” while ignoring the plight of the women, and the poor and the underpriveledged for the rest of the year. it’s the season of crowded malls, and crowded shopping centers, and crowded stores, and crowded restaurants, and over-worked and underpaid temporary help who will go back to being unemployed the day after xmas. it’s the season of crummy music that hasn’t changed in 200 years. it’s the season of enormous fake candy canes and fake tinsel bells hanging from street lamps…
it’s the season when big corporations make more profit that they make at any other time of the year, and “normal” people spend more than they have and borrow from the next one to three upcoming months to buy gifts that, for the most part, will not be remembered in a month anyway…
even when it’s not that season, i endeavour to avoid such things at all costs…
happy thanksgiving. 😐
postus interruptus
i wrote a whole bunch of stuff that i realised would go really well in a post that i have scheduled for the 30th, so i incorporated it into that, and now i don’t have anything for today…
wait, yes i do…
SNOW!! 😛
monday, snow pretty much all day. everything totally screwed up: jack-knifed trucks shut freeways down, people abandoning cars on the freeway, roads blocked by abandoned/crashed cars and busses, people driving the wrong direction on the freeway, bus flipped sending 10 people to the hospital… total DRAG. tuesday, frozen snow left over from monday. some new, but not very much. roads are a little better, but people got the idea and stayed home, so there wasn’t as much chaos. wednesday, persistent frozen snow from monday, no new snow so far. they’re saying that the weather should be back in the mid-40s and raining tomorrow.
i can’t wait. i hate snow…
no, i don’t hate snow, i hate being cold. i would far rather be too hot than too cold (and when i have the chance, you can’t get me out of a sauna). i also hate having to get somewhere when it’s snowing. not because i can’t drive in the snow (i actually learned to drive in buffalo, new york, where there is 6 to 12 feet of snow, pretty much all winter, every year), but because other people can’t drive in the snow. it’s really, really sad when i am driving my front-wheel-drive ford station wagon with no chains, and i pass up a fully chained hummer that has driven into the ditch and been abandoned… really sad…
first snow of the season!
it snowed pretty much all day yesterday. here are some pictures i took around 7:00 pm
this was with “night vision” looking down towards norm’s house. you can see Ganesha The Car, and the jeep at the bottom of our property…
this is the same picture taken with the flash.
the second fire of the year, and the first one started with one match. 🙂
our fireplace. it’s getting its first-of-the-season workout…
another week closer to the eschaton…
A Vegan No More – i wasn’t vegan, but i was a strict vegetarian for 15 years, and i didn’t have as severe health problems as this lady did, but in a lot of ways, this could be a story about me.
92% of Afghans never heard of 9/11 – four in 10 Afghans believe the US is on their soil in order to “destroy Islam or occupy Afghanistan.”
Sir, There’s a Camera in Your Head – this guy has a lot going for him in my book: he hacked a video game and placed a virtual avatar of himself as a suicide-bomber hunting president george w. bush, he confined himself to an art gallery where people could shoot him with paintballs, and now he’s having a camera implanted in his head, and displaying the pictures it takes in a museum in qatar, but what makes me really sit up and take notice is that his current show is called The 3rd I, which was the name of the magazine i designed and printed in the mid-1980s… great minds really do think alike… 8)
Huckabee Calls For Lawmakers To Ignore Court Rulings They Disagree With – um… no. 😐
10 Ways to Outfox Cops That Are Abusing Their Powers to Trick You – common sense, really, but they’re all there, in a brief, understandable format.
How Wal-Mart, Google and Other Corporate Giants Are Trying to Trick Progressive Consumers – “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you, fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
FBI pressuring Google, Facebook to allow ‘back doors’ for wiretapping and Debt collectors using Facebook to stalk and humilate – more reasons to avoid using google and facebook… not only that, but Tim Berners-Lee says Facebook ‘threatens’ web future – and, personally, i believe that tim berners-lee is a person who we should probably listen to when it comes to the future of the web…
Suspected bomb in Namibia was ‘security test’ – wait, so the suspected bomb that everybody was so up-in-arms about earlier in the week was actually a US made “dummy” bomb to test security?? i would say that whatever test that was designed to be a part of, is a resolute failure, if it took them four days to figure out who sent it…
$11,000 fine, arrest possible for some who refuse airport scans and pat downs – if you decide that the porno-scanner and the sexual assault enhanced pat down are too much for you, don’t plan on going to the airport at all, ’cause you’re not gonna get out of it, one way or the other… 😐
TSA Opt-Out Day, Now with a Superfantastic New Twist! – wear a kilt and strike a blow against the very big stupid! or, if you’re a celebrity like penn jillette you can get your own, private escort to assure the TSA goons that everything will be okay…
Full Frontal Nudity Doesn’t Make Us Safer and Does TSA Behavior Fall under Definition of Terrorism? – the government are terrorists! porno-scanners and fondling…
Why Congress Isn’t So Concerned With TSA Nude Scans & Gropes: They Get To Skip Them – now it all makes sense…
One Hundred Naked Citizens: One Hundred Leaked Body Scans and Leaked Body Scanner Images Do Not Show The Whole Picture – Advanced imaging technology cannot store, print, transmit or save the image, and the image is automatically deleted from the system after it is cleared by the remotely located security officer? i think not… it’s just a matter of time before somebody posts a web site that offers porno-scanner pictures…
Fly With Dignity – sign the petition to end invasion of privacy and “dick-measuring” scanners now!
Sanford Airport to opt out of TSA screening – orlando says enough is enough. they set a good example for everyone else.
TSA Likely To Face Multiple Sexual Assault Charges For New Searches – the war on terror is over. the terrorists have won.
Is your ISP throttling you? Just switch—if you live in the EU – if you live in the US, you’re quickly running out of options, and those in charge apparently don’t care.
Oil to run out 100 years before replacements become viable, study claims – when in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout… and that’s gonna’ be about all you can do, because there will be no more oil… 😐
Google Is Assembling a City – “When society inevitably collapses, Googleville will be the sole safe haven, but only those with company IDs will be allowed in.” this is the reason why i am more than a little bit suspicious of google and their motives for doing things like sending me $100 in free advertising if i respond by a certain time…
Panic after ‘Devil attack’ at school – they still blame things on the devil? this is the 21st century, people… 😐
Aleister Crowley for President, 2012 – “We realize that Aleister Crowley is dead. And British. And, moreover, not running for office. Nevertheless, we believe that the most effective vote you can cast in 2012 is one for Aleister Crowley.”
grmph!
it’s getting really close to opening night for the panto, and the fremont players domain has developed a DNS hiccup that i haven’t been able to figure out. apparently, “ticking the box that says “Use the nameservers specified at the Domain’s Registrar (ignore locally specified nameservers)” on the “Create a New Account” page” isn’t part of the deal, but i haven’t used a “Create a New Account” page on fremontplayers.com for almost a year, and certainly not before i switched to the new host server, approximately 5 months ago… even more bizarre is the fact that it was working just fine yesterday.
not only that, but the webdavs web disk applet that i use has suddenly decided not to work: instead of connecting me to the machine in california on which hybrid elephant lives, it hangs up and won’t go any further on my mac, and on the linux box, everything loads, but when i try to copy or move files, it says “the disk ‘hybridelephant.com’ doesn’t exist”. i can move things around with ftp and ssh over a text-based connection, but i’ve really come to appreciate the reality of doing all that technical web stuff with a graphical user interface…
i’m just wasting space, because of nablopomo. if i weren’t obligated to post, i probably wouldn’t, today.
according to the gregorian calendar, this is the 20th of november, 2010 AD (Anno Domini).
according to the holocene calendar, this is the 20th of november, 12010 HE (Holocene, or Human Era).
according to the julian calendar, this is the 3rd of december, 2010.
according to the chinese calendar this is the 15th day of the 10th month of the 99th year of the republic.
according to the umm al-qura (islamic calendar) today is the 14th day of dhū ‘l-hijja, 1431 AH (After Hijira).
according to the nepali calendar, today is the 4th day of Mangshir, 2067 BS (Bikram Sambat).
according to hindu “pachang“, i got the following information for today, in seattle (your mileage may vary): Sunrise/Set: 07:22/16:26, Moonrise: 15:34, Kartikai, Shaka: 1932 Vikrutha, Kartika / Shukla Paksha
Tithi: Chaturdashi till 09:07:14, Nakshtra: Bharani till 17:24:09, Yoga: Variyan till 15:11:02, Karana: Vanija till 09:07:14, Karana: Vishti till 21:20:54, Rahukalam: 09:38-10:47, Yamagandam: 13:01-14:10, Gulikai: 07:22-08:31, Abhijit: 11:35-12:13, Durmuhurtam: 07:22-07:59, Durmuhurtam: 07:58-08:36, Varjyam: 29:47-31:26, Amritkalam: 12:22-14:03, Sun in: Vrishchika, Moon in: Vrishabha at 23:39, Tamil Yoga: Marana 17:24:09, Tamil Yoga: Siddha, Anandadi Yoga: Dwanksha 17:24:09, Anandadi Yoga: Dhawaja.
according to the zoroastrian calendar, today is tir shehrevar, 1380 YZ (Yazdegerdi Era).
according to ISO 8601, today is 2010W43-5.
according to the aztec calendar, it is 9 etz’nab 11 keh.
according to the tonalpohualli (mayan calendar), today is 12 acatl, 1 itzcuintli, 9 tecpatl
according to the long count mayan calendar it is baktun 12, katun 19, tun 17, winal 15, kin 18.
according to the discordian calendar, it is prickle-prickle, the 23rd day of The Aftermath, 3176 YOLD (Year of Our Lady of Discord)… or not…
The Book of Children, chapter 5
update
i got an order for 1000 postcards through a recommendation from a long time customer. i’m probably going to get a special order for a kilo of incense from somebody who doesn’t want to pay via paypal, so he’s sending me a checque, which will probably add around a week to the amount of time that it will take until he gets his order.
i got two emails within a comparitively short period of time from a former friend turned raging alcoholic. i’ve gotten three or four emails from him in the past 10 years, and suddenly i get two emails from him within a week. i also have a copy of the last letter i sent to him, almost exactly ten years ago, that starts out with the phrase “you’re delusional, and you’ve been that way for quite some time now.” and goes downhill rapidly from there. i’m glad i’m so obsessive about keeping personal correspondence, otherwise i might not have remembered that this is the same guy who stayed in my apartment for a week right after i had moved to seattle from bellingham, in 1996, and proceded to make a copy of the key to my apartment, so that when i finally threw him out because he was an irresponsible drunken bastard, he came back and cleaned out my apartment while i was at work, and then was surprised when i showed up at his residence in bellingham with the cops… or the fact that he, then, proceded to accuse me of stealing his cheap stereo and rusty scale, which i hadn’t seen in years… the same guy who tried to guilt me into shutting up by asking questions about me finishing my degree, and my relationship with my God and gurudeva…
i wrote a terse email back to him, but i’m not holding my breath.
thanks to xydexx (who falls into the category of people i have known for 25 years or more… scary, isn’t it?)
“You know how sometimes people on your friendslist post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think “Wait a minute? Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating HIM/HER? Since when???” And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know?”
FIRST NAME: salamandir
AGE: older than dirt
LOCATION: seattle area
OCCUPATION: brain injured, tuba playing freak with a taste for fire
PARTNER: yes.
KIDS: one and done.
BROTHERS/SISTERS: two sisters, one brother, haven’t seen or spoken with any of them for 25 years or more.
PARENTS: mother and father both living in bellevue. haven’t spoken with them in a few years either.
PETS: currently, four dogs, three cats, a parrot and a snake. soon to include a litter of puppies.
THREE TO FIVE THINGS GOING ON IN MY LIFE: 1) [REDACTED] 2) one of the bands i play in is getting more and more frustrating because the only language that all of us speak in common is music, which makes organising things like rehearsals and concerts almost impossible. 3) none of the bands i play in have a gig on new years eve. wanna hire me?
CLOSE FRIENDS: a very few people that i’ve known on and off for 25 years or more, a somewhat larger number of people who i’ve known for 20 years or less, and nobody in between.
also, ROTFLMAOWTIME…
yay… electricity is cool…
we went out for dinner last night, after going over to a friends’ house to access internet – moe has “discussion topics” that she has to contribute to, which are a part of her grade, and i had to check email – and when we returned home, the electricity was back on…
WHEW!
much as i enjoy fantasizing about fishtown, it’s occasions like yesterday which drive home the point that i probably could not make such a place work on anything more than a temporary basis if i had no electricity.
quite apart from network access, which can be provided by portable devices fairly easily these days, if i didn’t have electricity, both to power things and to recharge things, i wouldn’t last very long at all.
which, of course, brings me to the next stage in the process of making myself independent of infrastructure that supplies such things in a “normal” way, which is researching and creating a reliable, alternative source of electricity.
which, ultimately, shouldn’t be that difficult: i have a number of friends who have done small-scale power generation projects in the past, and that was before things like wind-spinners and solar panels became so “mainstream”. at this point, it shouldn’t be that difficult to attach a combination of solar panels and a wind-spinner to the roof of my house and/or my workshop, and drive things like the computers and network stuff – and, potentially, important things like the refrigerator and freezer – from batteries…
bugger!
i didn’t realise when i signed up for nablopomo, that i hadn’t taken into account the fact that i live in the boonies, and there’s always the possibility of the electricity going out… which it did, last night at around 9:30.
there hasn’t been any electricity all day, which means that my linux desktop box and the router have been down. my mac has also been down, in spite of the fact that it’s a laptop, even though it was powered down correctly and not on at all when the power went out, because apparently when you leave it plugged in it actively drains the power from the battery. it could be that the battery is broken in some way, but i don’t think so because i just bought it about a year ago. there may be something else wrong with the computer, but if there is, it doesn’t affect how it works as a computer, which means that i’ve not noticed it before, but one way or the other, when i tried to boot it up this morning, the battery was completely flat…
i’m currently plugged in at a friends’ house who has power and internet – they live on the other side of auburn and weren’t affected by the massive wind storm that we had last night. according to the power company they are “aware” of the fact that we don’t have power, but we should take comfort in the fact that an ever increasing number of customers (last count it was over 550) are also without power, however they have no estimate of when it will be restored… also, if our power is out for more than 120 consecutive hours we’ll get a $50 credit on our account… wonderful… 😐
another week closer to the eschaton…
"Damn Right": Bush Boasts about Waterboarding – can we arrest him now?? 😛 apparently not: Torture? Check. Covering Up Torture? Check. Rule of Law? Nope. – “We cannot say that we live under the rule of law unless we are clear that no one is above the law. I think it’s clear. We cannot say we live under the rule of law.”
Will Internet censorship bill be pushed through lame-duck Congress? – “A lot of the things wrong with society today are directly attributable to the fact that the people who make the laws are sexually maladjusted.” — Frank Zappa
High Society exhibition: can dope give us hope? – “the ban on hallucinogens is holding back vital research into their medical benefits.” wow, man… trippy science stuff! 🙂
China may be bigger economy than US within two years and Is the American Dream Over? and The US Has Lived on Borrowed Money for Too Long – it’s gotten bad enough that other countries are starting to put it together…what do you think the probability is that this isn’t the end of the US as a superpower? further information regarding our imminent economic implosion and what we can do about it: As the Country Falls Apart, It’s Time for Our Revolution
Sikhs outraged at US airport turban searches – people, you’ve got to realise that not everyone who wears a turban is automatically muslim… or a terrorist… 😐
BP blamed for toxification and BP Successfully Disposed of the Oil … In the Gulf Food Chain – it’s still going on, and it’s worse than anybody imagined… again… 😐
and, while we’re at it, Chemicals in Fast Food Wrappers Show Up in Human Blood – more toxic chemicals are leaking from places where we don’t expect them, and ending up inside our bodies. wonderful…
Global Oil Availability Has Peaked : EU Energy Chief – meanwhile, where are we going and what’s with this hand-basket?
Is Death the End? Experiments Suggest You Create Time – this is the end, my only friend, the end. the end of laughter and soft lies, the end of nights we tried to die, this is the end…
NATIONAL OPT-OUT DAY! – if you’re travelling, wednesday, 24 november, 2010 is the day when you can say no to the dick-measuring radioactive backscatter scanning device… of course you don’t have to limit your opting out of “security theater” that doesn’t really protect anyone to wednesday, 24th november, it’s just that everyone else will (presumably) be doing it as well…
Naked Body Scanners To Store Biometrics and World’s Pilots Reject Naked Body Scanners Over Radiation Danger, Privacy Breach and TSA Responds To Airport Molestation Complaints – more power behind We Won’t Fly and Don’t Scan Us.
Oklahoma voters may have also banned Native American rights – i’m going to bet that someone’s going to complain about that… and the fact that they’re being stupid and childish about the whole thing won’t enter into the matter at all…
Senior US appeals court judge says drug war ‘lost,’ country should try legalizing marijuana – this is the direction we should be going, a senior, sitting federal judge calling for legalisation… now if only they’d listen to him: a federal judge said essentially the same thing in 1988, but nobody listened to him.
Inside My Haunted Head — What It’s Like to be a Schizophrenic – i don’t have schizophrenia, but there’s a lot more about this story that i can relate with than i’d like to admit.
Mass action shields soldier’s funeral – “The Westboro protesters didn’t stay long once they saw the supporters.” this is how we should be responding to all the extremists in our society: not by bombing them into oblivion or making unenforcable laws against their beliefs, but by gathering together and saying “no, we won’t allow you to behave like children around us”.
Arizona Reminds Residents Not to Drink From Toilets – this is where john mccain is senator…
ooh…. we’re a lot closer than anyone has apparently realised…
according to IPcalypse, we jumped from 214 days until no more IPv4 addresses, yesterday, to 117 days today – almost 100 days, in one swell foop…
to me this indicates, either that we’re all set with IPv6, and everything is all ready to make the switch immediately (which, if my personal machines are any indication, is not true) or that we are a lot closer to imminent total systems failure of the intar-webs than anybody realised…
dr. crusher: question: what, exactly, is “total systems failure”?
commander data: the borg are extremely computer-dependent. a systems failure will destroy them.
dr. crusher: i just think we should be clear about that.
i wonder if anyone else – specifically, if anyone else who can make a difference – has noticed… 😐
pretty lights
this was actually taken on monday, but i’m just getting around to downloading the photos from my camera. i tried to bring out as much light as i could, but there are actually a couple of big buildings, right in the center of the picture, which are lit up, but because of the fact that the individual lights are so small, only one of them barely shows up, but you can’t see the whole building. i know that photography that would capture that amount of light is possible, but apparently not with my digital camera. perhaps with my analogue camera, but that takes a lot longer to set up, which is not very conducive to taking pictures by the side of the freeway, with cars whizzing past you.
progress… sort of…
The Book of Children, chapter 4, cantos 1 through 5. this time, if the embed doesn’t work, your only option is xtranormal, because for some reason it has stopped uploading to my youtube channel… 😐
ETA: i’ve wangled around a way to upload the video to youtube, but it’s still giving me weird, intermittent, “unknown error” problems…
also, i almost forgot, today is #fezfriday and i forgot to post my fez picture, so…
geek ≡ me
the rules (to which i contributed) state that this shouldn’t be done, but rules were meant to be broken from time to time. not only that, but i think this is a very good example of why i’m perfectly happy using the operating system i am using, which is kubuntu, rather than either mac or windows… although, to be honest, i’ve experienced essentially the same thing on a mac, but at this point, my impression is that macs have turned into expensive toys for geek-wannabes with too much money.
anyway…
i got three spam messages that made it through my principle spam filter. of course, the spammers didn’t count on my having a secondary spam filter, and they still ended up in my waste messages bin without even hitting my inbox, but that’s not the point. the point is that one of the three messages was in arabic text, and it rendered correctly on my machine. keep in mind that arabic is written right-to-left, and english is written left-to-right (which is why i didn’t copy and paste the text: wordpress, for all of its advantages, doesn’t deal well with LTR and RTL languages and non-standard text – i.e. not unicode – in the same post). i took a screen shot of it, though, and here it is:
of course i reported it to spamcop, and deleted it without replying, but it’s not often that a spam message makes that much of a positive impression on me. it wasn’t the words themselves, but the fact that my computer knows enough to be able to differentiate between RTL and LTR text in the same message without some kind of special prompt from me.
update
i didn’t have a rehearsal yesterday, because it’s the “sousa-torium” (i.e. the break between sousa’s birthday and march or so, when we start rehearsing for next year. also, i don’t have a rehearsal tonight, because kiki’s going to the memorial for george shangrow, and anyway, they’re changing the whole story around (big surprise) so they don’t need the band, which is good because i could use the time off. it will also give me time to design a xmas postcard for the BSSB, which we are going to try to do again this year.
i went to help out my brain-injured client again yesterday. he had somehow added a wiget that he didn’t want to his panel. he said he didn’t, but i certainly didn’t put it there, and he’s the only other person to have access to the hardware, so i tend to believe that he did it in spite of what he says. after talking with tamzin, who also has aged, brain-injured clients, i bit the bullet and locked the panel, so that he can’t do it again. it’s obvious that he doesn’t really know what he’s doing about half of the time, and to leave “secret” methods of modifying the interface does more harm than good. also, he apparently has a preference for the “kickoff” style menu, rather than the “classic” windows-style menu, which is a good thing to remember.
something went wrong with one of the stylesheets and suddenly the login page for my blog looked all wonky. the last time this happened was a couple of years ago, when my blog was hacked, so i was pretty worried. i checked, and the blog didn’t appear to be hacked in the same way it was before, but still: the error i was getting was “Failed to load login.css” and i could see that login.css was there, and i looked at it and it looked the way it was supposed to… so i went to the wordpress “support” site, which is probably good for some people, but i have never gotten a usable solution when i have gone there with problems with my wordpress installation. nevertheless, it’s a place to start, so i did. i waited two days and nobody responded to my query… 😐 so i then logged into IRC, went to #wordpress and asked there. the guy who (finally) responded asked if i had tried uploading the file from a backup.
d’oh!
once i had uploaded and replaced the stylesheet, everything went back to the way it’s supposed to be.
The Book of Children, canto 3
The Books of Tina Chopp, book 1, canto 3, chapter 1, verses 1 through 6. as before, if the embed doesn’t work, you can also view it at YouTube or XtraNormal.
another week closer to the eschaton…
i woke up this morning, and checked my email. i had 4,856 new messages, all with the same subject line, which included the word “MLM”… please stop sending me these messages. they’re not accomplishing what you think they are, they’re really annoying, and i’m about to block your country’s IP addresses because of it. there are better ways of doing… whatever it is that you’re expecting to be able to do by sending out 4,856 spam email messages… 😐
A piece of their mind – they share thoughts… in spite of the fact that they have two sets of eyes, one can “read” what the other is seeing, without actually seeing it… The Fascinating Story of the Twins Who Share Brains, Thoughts, and Senses has more, including a video… fascinating!
The Return of the Stoned Ape – smart people do more drugs because of evolution. now it all makes sense… 😀 and, while we’re at it, Smart people SLEEP LATE as well… so there!
and now, to more mundane topics…
33 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True – fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord. beware, the paranoids are watching you. fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord.
The Information Super-Sewer: Will the Internet be Hijacked by Corporate Interests – funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth. also Final nail in coffin for Net neutrality? – all 95 house and senate candidates who pledged support for net neutrality lost their races. what does this mean? it means that your unlimited, uncensored, unthrottled and open internet service will be going away as soon as the major corporations that now own internet are going to get to decide how much to charge you for how much access… which means that it won’t be too long before internet will be exactly like television, unless you can afford to make it better.
A Modest Proposal to Republicans: How to Trim the Budget – hint: it’s something that a republican would never think of…
Chomsky: US-led Afghan war, criminal – to date there is no evidence that al-qaeda has carried out the 9/11 attacks, and still we use that as justification to make war on a people who have their own problems.
The Surprising History of Copyright and The Promise of a Post-Copyright World – copyright was never primarily about paying artists for their work, and trying to make it about that now is obfuscating the real reason, which is to make the distributors as much money as possible. copying is not theft, piracy, or anything else illegal, and the sooner we toss the current copyright law fiasco and start over again, the better.
Minnesota Mom Hit With $1.5 Million Fine for Downloading 24 Songs – copying IS NOT theft! (my new mantra).
Bankruptcy of U.S. is ‘Mathematical Certainty,’ Says Former CEO of Nation’s 10th Largest Bank – yep… the end is coming, and it’s not looking like it’s going to be particularly pretty when it gets here.
Voters Approve Sharia Law Ban – meanwhile, fear, insanity and unreasoned reactionism comes to oklahoma, whether they like it or not… oh well, there are always 49 other states… 😐 meanwhile, it appears that Oklahoma Voters May Have Accidentally Voted Against Ten Commandments, Too – that’s what they get for being stupid and making nonsensical laws without thinking them through.
Details on PayPal’s Site Outage – they have been doing okay, despite the bad things that i continue to hear about them, but they apparently went down for anywhere from two to twenty four hours, depending on where you are, and so far they’ve not released any information other than to say “something broke. it’s fixed now, and we’re sorry.”
Google calls bug bounty hunters to YouTube, Blogger – $3,133.70 a bug seems like a lot, and i seriously doubt that their actual testers get paid anything like that. what this is, really, is an attempt by google to have volunteer “testers” hammer on their technology without having to pay them for doing so. then, when a “tester” discovers something, google can claim that they found it, pay the “tester” a minimal, one time fee and never mention the “tester” to anyone ever again… everybody’s happy, at least temporarily, and the big corporation profits at the expense of the american drone, who doesn’t notice because he’s too busy telling all of his friends how 733T he is… you can’t make a living on it, but it’s the american dream come true… 😐
Seagate squirts out rectal cleaning spray – no shit… 🙂
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: President Obama Visits Chicago and a Homeless Man Begs Him for Alms – no further comment needed.
Marijuana Legalization: Not If, But When – agreed, it’s just a matter of time, but it’s going to have to be the entire country, or it’s not going to work… and whether or not the entire country legalises it through a revolution or through a civil election still remains to be seen.
New Mother’s (False) Positive Drug Test Leads to Baby’s Removal… Poppy-Seed Bagel the Culprit – the only way to solve problems like this is to legalise all drugs, but if proposition 19 is any indication, even when we’re winning, we’re really losing… and while we’re at it, No reason for pot prohibition – when are we going to get the idea that the war on drugs is a collosal failure? not for the next couple of years, at this rate… 😐
not only that, but A molecular link between the active component of marijuana and Alzheimer’s disease pathology – the active ingredient in cannabis, delta-9-tetrahydracannabinol (THC), competitively inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE), the key pathological marker of alzheimer’s disease. are we ready to legalise it yet?
Cargo plane bomb plot: passengers to face ‘ludicrous security measures’ – now that we have successfully prevented another terrorist plot from even reaching the country, of course, the logical response is to put more stringent measures in place to insure that innocent citizens are harrassed, poked, prodded, scanned and examined in new and unusual ways, to make sure that the terrorists don’t win again… oh, and by the way, Yemeni mail bombs suspect ‘had identity stolen’ – so we really don’t have any clearer an idea who did it then we did a week ago… swell…
For the First Time, the TSA Meets Resistance – they’re now searching your “crotchal” area, and they really want to get you to use the “Dick-Measuring Device” back-scatter imaging device, so be warned…
Pollution in China – this is why stuff is cheap in america. remember that the next time you buy something.
Obama may let CIA run more ‘hunter-killer’ teams roam abroad – this is premeditated murder and i question what the real intent is…
Why I don’t vote – W? T? F? i can understand a multitude of reasons for not participating in the farce of elections these days, but basing your abstinence in voting on 1 timothy 2.12 is far beyond anything that i could possibly figure out…
McDonald’s furious after San Francisco bans Happy Meals – apparently they didn’t get the memo…
Ram Dass Has a Son! – DNA tests confirm it, and ram dass is okay with it, so it doesn’t look like it’s going to cause a major uproar (like it has with other “spiritual” teachers), but it also is pretty much not what you would expect…
forwards into the past – my experiences with goat island
my finding the articles about fishtown the other day has caused a great deal of uproar in my feeble, damaged brain: very strong, detailed memories that don’t seem contected to any particular event combined with a general uncertainty about the whole period of time in question leaves me wondering what actually happened, and when.
these are things that i know concerning fishtown and goat island:
the first time i went to goat island was between 1982 and 1985, but i think it was around 1982. i’m not sure why i was going to fishtown specifically, but i apparently knew some people who lived there full time, or something like that. there was also talk of starting an “intentional community” (read “hippy commune”) on goat island, since it had a convenient abandoned gun emplacement that could be used as “temporary” (read “permanent”… it was huge, and mostly underground, thus dry and relatively warm) dwelling place. my sister kathryn and her boyfriend (who eventually became her husband) eric were planning on going as well, but due to some conflict with eric (which were quite common at that time), they ended up going to goat island separately, camped on the other side of the island, and i never saw them. i went with randy, and we spent two days trying to get to goat island. the first day we parked along the side of the road, basically in the middle of nowhere, outside of la conner, and hiked in to bald island, which was accessible by a rickety foot bridge. that night we camped on the bluffs on the west end of bald island overlooking shit creek (ship creek? my guess is that they were trying to be polite on the poet’s web site… 🙂 ) and got a ride with bex into fishtown the next morning. the second night we spent in robert sund’s cabin, which was a lot nicer than sleeping on the rocky ground. there is a drawing inspired by robert sund’s “wind letters” which i had seen there in my sketchbook. also there is a picture of a completed "wind letter" that is in my workshop at this very moment… that’s how profound an impact this place had on my consciousness. in the morning of the second day, singin’ dan and red dan and randy and i set out in one boat and bex set out in another boat, and we rounded goat island (because of the jetty, we couldn’t get to where we wanted to go directly). i was astounded to see a two-story house on the mud-flats. somebody had bought a 40 foot barge, moved his whole house onto it, and then parked it in the mud to the west of the island, where he made all the money he needed for the whole year by shoring up the monsterous pleasure boats belonging to obscenly rich people who figured that they could go anywhere in a boat that was given to impacting the bottom of the bay when the tides went out. we spent at least a week on goat island, with the conflict with eric escalating all the time. i remember singin’ dan impressing me with his knowledge of native plants and their uses. we built a huge fire in one of the abandoned gun emplacements, which burned for three days, and made a huge pot of stew with rabbits and wild cabbage and onions. we were going to return to fishtown through the fish-hole in the jetty, but we didn’t time the tides quite right (it’s difficult to approximate time when you haven’t seen a watch or a clock for a week), so we went into la conner instead, and from there we got a ride back to our car.
i also went to goat island with katharyn and ezra, when ezra was a tiny baby… maybe that was the time with the conflict with eric, i’m not sure… anyway, i remember it was during a break from the tech school, and i rented a canoe from the university boat house. we parked at the end of the road outside of la conner and had a straight shot from sandy beach to the island, along the jetty. because of the fact that i had timed it correctly, we hardly even had to paddle, the tide just carried us out with it – which was a good thing, because of the fact that we had ezra, we had a huge boatload of diapers and stuff, plus three people – well, two people and a baby – in a canoe that wasn’t really intended to hold more than two people, or one person and his camping gear. i remember, on the way there, we had, literally, an inch or less of freeboard. one good wave would have swamped us and abruptly ended the trip. i don’t remember that much about that trip (it is not at all surprising that a camping trip with the PHBFH would not stick in my memory), except for the fact that we made it and didn’t drown or lose anything important, like the baby. there is a list in my sketchbook, dated 850621-23 that appears to match what memories are there, but i seem to recall ezra being much younger, as little as 6 months old, at the time, so there may have been multiple visits with katharyn and ezra.
i went to goat island at least two more times. once with randy and jenny, where we actually canoed around in the area where the people who owned the house made their money. because of the fact that we were in a shallow-draft boat, we were able to go exploring in a lot of areas that are inaccessible otherwise. i remember we came up on this small island, and someone coughed (there was a fair amount of pot smoking going on), and, instantaneously, the sky all around was filled with great blue herons that had a rookery on the island. i got a feather from one of the nests that i still have, on the desk in front of me, at this very moment… 🙂
the last time i went to goat island must have been around 1985 to 1986 or so, and it was with jim. i don’t remember anything about how we got there, or how long we stayed. i do remember that jim was so afraid of appearing “gay” that he camped on the other side of the gun emplacement from me, in a place where we were not even in visual contact. it rained that night, and we moved further into the abandoned gun emplacement to avoid getting wet, and i remember trying to get warm, and rolling around in my sleeping bag, which i had parked next to a doorway, in the pitch dark of the night, and not being able to find the doorway i had gone to sleep next to… and then, in the morning, i discovered that i had rolled all the way across the underground chamber, diagonally, until i was next to the doorway that went out of the room on the other side, which was about 50 feet away. it didn’t rain the next night, and i slept under the stars, and during the night i found a watch on the ground, under a bunch of pine needles and leaf litter, that was probably lost by a previous camper.
i don’t know what ultimately happened to fishtown, and i probably don’t want to know. i also have no idea what ever happened to the people i knew there, with the exception of robert, who has since become both a noted poet, calligrapher and artist, and dead. after corresponding with frog hospital, i learned that bex and red dan are still in and/or around the mount vernon/edison/sedro-woolley area. he doesn’t know what happened to singin’ dan, though… oh well. it’s a shame that it had to end in whatever way it ended – i seem to recall logging and/or bulldozers and people with huge quantities of money who wanted to “develop” the area in 1988 or thereabouts, which was when i was in the middle of the failed bus project… another person i knew from that place and time was mauldiwarp moongate-climber, the person from whom i bought the failed bus project, but that’s another story… 🙂
dio de los muertos and other gig-related ramblings
i had a gig last sunday, a rehearsal monday and wednesday, another gig yesterday, and a gig today. i get sunday off (because our usual rehearsal space will not be available this week), then i have a rehearsal monday, tuesday and wednesday of next week.
the gig yesterday was for the dio de los muertos celebration at the seattle art museum. unlike most of the previous banda gozona performances i’ve been to, this one included my camera and i took some really cool photos, not all of which are related to dio de los muertos. but most of them are… the gig today is the ballard sedentary sousa band’s “Sousa Bash” for john philip sousa’s birthday. unlike previous years, when we have had an outsized saxophone and a standing-room-only crowd, or last year, when there was a major storm, the bridge closed, and we had to start a half-hour late because most of the band wasn’t there, this year promises to be relatively tame… although that was said before the performance, and a lot could change between now and 6:00 pm. the philharmonic is into full rehearsal mode for the december panto, which has been extended to four weeks this year.
busy busy busy…
hats and pictures, in no particular order
this was taken at approximately 6:30 in the afternoon, on state highway 99, south of the duwamish river, looking north.
here is a krampus fez if any of you out there are interested in getting me a xmas present. also i still haven’t gotten the abraham lincoln top hat that i was lusting after in may. either one (or both) of these would earn my eternal gratitude, and whatever i make or sell of equal value in return… just mentioning it… 🙂
speaking of fezzes, this is #FezFriday for @fezmonger who, of course, won’t be able to find the hashtag, because it’s not on twitter, or whatever infernal machination is in charge of that sort of thing. nevertheless, Fez Friday this week is augmented by Zora, the Queen of Cute, and the Fourth Fastest Dog IN THE UNIVERSE, which will, hopefully, further influence the arbiter of such things to decide in my favour when awarding a 50% off coupon for a fez order, later in the month.
Subh Deepavali
asato maa sadgamaya
tamaso maa jyotirgamaya
mṛtyormaa amṛtam gamaya
Lead me from ignorance to enlightenment.
Lead me from darkness to light.
Lead me from death to immortality.
— Bṛhadaranyakaupanishad, 1.3.28
more
as before, if the embed doesn’t work, you can also see it at XtraNormal or YouTube.
this is fun. i’m going to have to re-do the third canto, though. for some reason, it’s still “shooting this video” in spite of the fact that it’s been 12 hours since i sent it to “production”…
nablopomo
i don’t suppose anyone else has noticed the NaBloPoMo logo in the sidebar over there, but it’s there, and to be honest, i have no justification for such an action.
yes, november is national blog posting month, and it would appear that i am signed up for it. but i’ve never been motivated to do this kind of thing before, and while i think it’s possible to come up with a blog post every day for a month – their web site talks about “discipline” – i don’t see that it will take much discipline to write a blog post every day. what concerns me is that i won’t be able to find content that will be appropriate, since one of the main purposes of this blog is to keep track of things that i want to remember, which means that each day is going to have to hold some gem that i will want to write about, and i know from many long years of experience that i can’t guarantee that’s going to happen…
anyway… go nablopomo… rah rah…
another week closer to the eschaton…
in honour of the “holiday” Cambodians beaten, raped and killed at illegal detention camp funded by UN – trick or treat for UNICEF…
Arkansas school board member to resign over anti-gay post – the problem with this guy, and all of the “christians” out there like him, is that the only reason he’s sorry now is because he got caught. if he hadn’t posted those comments on facebook, maybe expressed them privately, but for the most part kept them to himself, then he would continue to be a member of the arkansas school board, and nobody would be wise to his warped sensibilities. the “problems” caused by minorities of any kind are going to be solved only when these hateful, and unfortunately quite large portions of the population are eliminated, either through re-education or attrition.
Furious growth and cost cutting led to BP oil spills, past and present and Panel Says Firms Knew of Cement Flaws Before Spill – if you thought it was over, think again…
Fresh blockades as a quarter of France’s petrol stations still dry – a couple of weeks ago i posted a link to an article which said that there is no “plan b” to fall back on, in case “plan a” (which appears to be something along the lines of “ignore it and maybe it will go away”) fails. this is exactly the kind of chaos that you can expect to see more of, as time goes on, and oil becomes more and more scarce. here are some examples of how things are falling apart faster than we can fix them:
The scary actual U.S. government debt – “Let’s get real, the United States is bankrupt.”
What It’s Like to Work in Walmart – an underemployed teacher gets a job at walmart, hillarity ensues. beware: this could will probably happen to you.
Oops: Pentagon loses contact with nukes in Wyoming – it’s all right, folks, nothing to see here… move along.
Google finally admits that its Street View cars DID take emails and passwords from computers – DON’T. BE. EVIL! 😛
Group offers $10,000 to anyone who can disprove the claim that ‘cannabis is safer than alcohol’ – they’re confident that the $10,000 will remain unclaimed, and i don’t doubt they’re right, but i doubt that it’s going to make that much of a difference when it comes to legalisation. most people are pretty stupid, and that includes the people in charge… 😐
meanwhile: Study: Alcohol more lethal than heroin, cocaine – overall, alcohol outranked all other substances… cannabis, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower… BIG surprise, especially considering that the alcohol lobby has been pouring money into the campains against the legalisation of cannabis…
Sex researchers: "Size" does matter – year-long study from turkey concludes that men with a higher body mass index last longer in bed. mcdonald’s advertising to follow soon.
I Can’t Find My Phone – finally, a web site that’s actually good for something!
John Cage still being cheated out of royalties for his silent work –
tee hee…
if the embed doesn’t work, you can try YouTube or XtraNormal which should work just fine. this was a proof of concept project. because of the fact that it came out so well (i only had to adjust one word, because of “mispronounciation” of the word “LIVE” which can be pronounced either /liv/ or /laiv/ and there’s no way to distinguish between the two), there will doubtless be more like it in the near future. now you are one step closer to having your own Vegetable Sacrifice ceremonies of your own, without any knowledge of The Books of Tina Chopp! 🙂
oh, yeah… the URI for the correct book is http://www.ebeneezer.net/doctrine/tbot/1/1.html… somehow the one on XtraNormal got duplicated, and i don’t want to go back and fix it.
another enjoyable evening at chumleighland
so ¾ of Snake Suspenderz went out to Cholmondleigh-land (his actual site is here, but he’s got some sort of infernal device on his site that keeps crashing my new version of firefox – konqueror does okay, however, which makes me wonder what is really the problem). all in all, a quite enjoyable evening, although the hippie ineptitude factor seemed to be working overtime: we were consistently running late, and it wasn’t until 10:00 or so that we managed to get the live show over and start on the films. i managed to be able to break moe away from her homework and brought her along as well, which made the evening all the more enjoyable. we were joined on stage by the inimitable master payne and, of course, the reverend himself, although he didn’t “ascend a stairway of machetes, barefoot” because somebody ripped off all his machetes, so instead he walked a pathway of broken glass, barefoot. since the last time i was there, he has actually finished the rail-pup (a self-propelled closed-circut railway) which was even more fun in the dark – you’d be barreling along blindly, cranking to beat the band, and the track would suddenly curve and you’d be riding on two wheels trying not to fall over… not like the last time i was there, when the track wasn’t finished yet, and if you didn’t watch where you were going, you’d plunge off the end of the track into the undergrowth…
chumleigh and i have been doing what we do, more or less, for 35 years or so: in 1978 i was playing with a dixieland band, and we were playing for the last official “Fat Tuesday” celebration in seattle. unbeknownst to us (at the time), there had been a major riot in pioneer square the night before, so there were mounted police in riot gear everywhere, and most everyone else was sticking to the edges of pioneer square, and acting very dodgy, and here we were, this small band of incredibly young musicians playing happy music in the square, very surreal. then this guy came up to us and introduced himself as reverend chumleigh, and wondered if we had a job or worked anywhere, and offered us a job playing at the alligator palace in la conner. i was the only person that had graduated from high school at the time, but i didn’t know where la conner was, and ended up in bellingham. i didn’t actually meet him again until much, much later, in 2008. in the mean time, i worked as a fish packer, a migrant farm worker, a typesetter, spent two years in a tech school, and then worked as a musical instrument repair technician, as a typesetter (again) and as a computer geek before i had a brain injury and realised that what i really wanted to be doing all along was music, whereas chumleigh was playing with the flying karamazov brothers, being involved with the beginnings of the oregon country fair, and building a reputation as one of the biggest names in vaudeville…
definitely makes me wonder what would have happened to me if i had known where la conner was, back in ’78…
ETA: in poking around, looking for links to the alligator palace, i found this article from Frog Hospital, about fishtown, a place that i visited in the early 1980s, and another article, about robert sund, whose cabin i stayed in the first time i visited fishtown… which, while it doesn’t have much about chumleigh, brings back a whole bunch of memories…
spam!!!
i’ve been getting A LOT of spam from, or by way of russia and china recently, and in my normal news perusing, i discovered that the guy who is responsible for the “canadian pharmacy” spam that you have, no doubt, seen in your own inbox – who is really a russian, and only nominally connected to any “canadian” pharmacies – has recently been arrested for operating a business without registration, but what i notice even more in this particular article is the apparent fact that spam is not illegal in russia… which would explain a lot.
this brings up a possibility that i have considered for a long time, which is to completely block all email from russia, and/or china. i have known, more or less, ever since about 1998 that it was possible to block people from sending you email from certain IP addresses, and i was vaguely aware that different regions can be identified from the first couple of IP address blocks, but i’ve never been exactly sure of how. i’ve been even less sure (although i’m pretty sure i knew at one time, having worked as a tester for a company that makes email server software) how to drop incoming email messages from a blocked IP address range with no response – i.e. if you’re in that IP address range and you send me an email, the email message just “disappears” with no reason given, but – and this the important part – i’m about 99.8% certain that it can be done fairly easily.
anybody who has ideas about how to do this should get in touch with me. i think it’s time to block email access from russia and china. the only email i get from those two countries are spam messages or malware, and it’s time to take action.
if it works as easily as i believe it will, i’m also thinking of blocking email access from africa – yes, the entire continent – as well.
ETA: something along this line is what i’m thinking of.
getting things done
today i went to somebody’s house in kent to drop off some coaxial cable, then i went to firwood, a suburb to the south of tacoma, to get parrot food, then i went through puyallup to milton, where i picked up an order for busines cards from a client, then i went into federal way to go to costco for groceries and gas before completing the grand circut home. once home, i prepared the artwork for the business card, and placed the order at the printers, did the laundry, and took out the trash.
i’ve got to take photos, and paste up a new page of printing examples for the Hybrid Elephant web site. i’ve got to figure out how to make, and then implement an updateable calendar for the BSSB web site.
i’ve mentioned my aged, brain-injured client in the past. this time he had me come over because, he admitted when i got there, he “got mad” at his computer, recently, and started randomly right- and left-clicking his mouse in an attempt to get it to do something (he never did tell me exactly what). the big result, which i’m still not exactly sure how he pulled it off, was that instead of kubuntu 9.whatever that i had installed for him, he now has a fresh, clean installation of kubuntu 10.04… and a whole bunch of “panels”, which are the linux equivalent of what, on windows, is called the “task bar”, and of which you can make as many as you want, that all do different things if you’re so inclined.
my client knows nothing about how all of the panels got there, he said that he was trying to get a popup window to go away. he did have “knotes” running, which makes popup “sticky notes” on the screen, and he had several dozen notes containing nothing but a date, that were all minimised.
i was a little taken aback that he had apparently successfully upgraded the system, but if nothing else, it’s a testament to how easy linux is to upgrade. once i got him back to a reasonable number (which, in his case, is one) of panels, deleted and removed the “popup” notes, and the KDE “desktop sharing” application, which had apparently been installed with the upgrade, and had him up and running again in about 20 minutes. i didn’t actually lock the panel – which would prevent him from “getting mad at the computer” and randomly changing things, and which i could have done fairly easily – because i don’t want to limit his exploration of the computer. if he’s aware of the fact that “getting mad” at the computer doesn’t automatically ruin the computer, my guess is that he’ll be a lot more willing to “poke around” the computer without getting mad…
40 years of inspiration
everybody is jumping on the bandwagon, which is normally something that causes me to examine my preferance towards something a lot more closely, but in this case, i think it is justified: doonesbury’s 40th anniversary.
this was one of the first appearances of a character that i haven’t seen in a loooong time, named Bernie. i don’t know what ever happened to him, and as far as i can tell, there isn’t any mention of him at Slate (which is what you get if you type in www dot doonesbury dot com), but Bernie has been an example of what i wanted my life to be like ever since i first encountered him.
mark slackmeyer and i had a rocky relationship at first. when he appeared on the scene, i was around 10 years old, and i was intent on not becoming one of those long-haired drug-taking hippie-radicals that were all the rage in the 70s… but then, a few years later, i went to college and my parents rented out my room, which meant that, when i came home between sessions, i had to sleep in the garage – mark slackmeyer spent at least one summer in his parents’ garage, for similar reasons. and as i got a couple of years into college, and discovered cannabis, LSD, and other “drugs” there came to be even more similarities between me and mark…
i have all of the original doonsebury books around here somewhere… these two were scanned from the second one, called “The President Is A Lot Smarter Than You Think”.
technology ramblings
Ms. Gates: ‘Bill does not use a Mac’ – that’s a definte change compared to when i was working at microsoft, from 1995 to 1997. at that time, it was well known around the campus that bill had a mac (among other things) on his desktop at work. if he’s not even interested in checking out the competition any longer, then my guess is that mickey$oft is not long for the world.
bill is no longer actually associated with the everyday operations of microsoft any more, so maybe he has decided that “keeping track of the competiton” isn’t as necessary, but at one time, bill was under the impression that mac was definitely worth keeping track of.
of course, it may have something to do with the fact that these days mac is headed in an entirely different direction than bill is interested in: while both companies are still major competitors, mac has developed a taste for phones, and tablets, and portable devices, while microsoft is more interested in the back end, servers, networks and that kind of thing. it could be that this is the reason bill no longer uses a mac.
i wonder if bill uses linux… i would expect probably not, but who knows?
gearing up for the holiday season
panto rehearsals start next monday, and are monday and wednesday until the performance starts, which is 4 december. for sure there is a banda gozona performance at the plymouth congregational church next sunday, and a possible snake suspenderz performance on friday, at chumleighland. then there is a banda gozona performance next thursday, at the SAM sculpture park, and a sousa band performance on 6 november (sousa’s birthday) at kenyon hall in west seattle.
oy… 😐
i just realised that i have a massive schedule conflict on 4 december: i have panto performances at hale’s palladium at 4:00 and 7:30, and i have a snake suspenderz performance at the drawing jam at the gage academy of art from 6:00 to 9:00… they’re both paying gigs… and last year i was actually the subject of a sketch by one of the artists at the drawing jam. i have to make a choice between playing music for a crowd of artists sketching naked people, or playing music for a crowd of british panto afficianados… what to do, what to do? 😐
another week closer to the eschaton…
news has been too depressing the past week, so this week’s collection of links is going to be mostly fluff. i’ll leave it up to others to decide which is which.
Christine O’Donnell: Where In The Constitution Is The Separation Of Church And State? and she’s now offering a reward of $1,000 For Anyone Who Can Find The Phrase "Separation Of Church And State" In The Constitution – why is there still any question about whether or not she’s actually qualified to be a state senator? that’s like saying sarah palin is qualified to be president of the united states… 😐
Former Surgeon General calls for legalization of marijuana and Dozens of law professors nation-wide endorse Calif. marijuana legalization – but the federal government is going to continue to prosecute people for cannabis, in spite of state laws that legalise it… it’s not exactly what i was expecting from obama and crew when i voted them into office… 😐 They’ve Stopped Pretending
The World’s Largest Gummy Worm – 128 times more massive than a traditional gummy worm, it’s three pounds and 4,000 calories of gummy… um… it looks suspiciously like a dildo…
Dead Sea scrolls going digital on Internet – yep…
Apple Patents Anti-Sexting Device – all the more impetus for kids to learn a large vocabulary.
Gangsta Lorem Ipsum – Lorizzle dang dolor sit amizzle, shizznit we gonna chung the bizzle. We gonna chung sapien velizzle, dang volutpizzle, owned quizzle, break it down vizzle, arcu.
exactly!
i’ve been carrying around a looseleaf notebook labeled “BRASS” ever since i graduated from the tech school, in 1986, which contains all of the class notes, handouts and other printed materials for the brass repair sections that i completed when i was in training.
because of the fact that, for 25 years i have focused on the repair of woodwind instruments, i have actually never looked in the looseleaf notebook labeled “BRASS”, and it has langushed in various places, including currently on a shelf in my workshop with a bunch of other looseleaf notebooks.
but last night, i took down that notebook, and turned to the exact page that had the answer that i was looking for, which was techniques for freeing stuck tuning slides.
i mentioned to moe last night that i had never even opened this notebook since my tech-school days, and she commented that i had carried it around with me for all that time without ever being used. however i would carry it around with me, unused, for another 25 years if i could be guaranteed that, the next time i open it, i would find exactly the information for which i am searching.
fleep 牁铃 ฒำฉ #2
i bought a chilton’s manual for “Escort/Tracer 1991-00 Repair”, which is way too clean and shiny, and wants to be grease-smeared and dog-eared…
i would attempt to replace the exhaust manifold gasket myself, if i had someone like wheelsmaster here to help me make sure i’m doing the right things, but because of the fact that the instructions for replacing the gasket start off with “remove the drivebelt” and, shortly afterwards, is followed by “While not absolutely necessary, it’s a good idea to remove the radiator as well; the core can easily be damaged if it’s bumped by the manifold during removal”, i’m worried that, if i do something wrong, i’ll be left with a hulk in my yard that i will have to have towed somewhere before it even has a hope of running again.
however, i know that jack said he would charge me “a couple of hours labour” to replace the gasket, i’m going to see what the guys at edgewood tire have to say about it. it probably won’t make that much difference, but i could actually supply whoever makes the repair with a gasket, as well. 🙂
fleep 牁铃 ฒำฉ
ganesha the car is overheating and acting strangely, so i took it to jack – the guy i got it from, who owns burien imports – because he said that he would also fix the cigarette lighter which i would use as a power adaptor for my cell-phone, if it worked, which it didn’t, until yesterday.
on thursday, last week, i went to kirkland for their “2nd thursday art walk”. it was raining, and the store that i parked in front of actually closed about half-an-hour after i got there (which meant that nobody was “art-walking” on that side of the street any longer), but on the way there, i had to fight with traffic and deal with the fact that ganesha the car was overheating. then, when i decided that the kirkland 2nd thursday art walk had run its course, i had to fight traffic again going the other way (which is only possible because seattle has the worst traffic ANYWHERE on a pretty regular basis) and it’s a miracle that i made it home without breaking down, even with the heater turned up all the way and the fan on full blast… 8(
of course by the time i took it to jack’s shop, yesterday, it wasn’t overheating at all, which was a good thing, since jack wouldn’t look at it anyway, because “it’s not an import” which means that he doesn’t even have a shop manual for it. i left it with him anyway, because he said he was going to fix my cigarette lighter problem, and went out for a perfectly timed day on the bus.
i took one bus into downtown seattle, from burien, got off it, and almost immediately got on another bus to fremont, where i picked up my shoes from the shoe-repair guy. i then relaxed, smoked a bowl, and caught a bus back into downtown seattle, where i wandered the pike place market for a while, talked with the flute-maker with whom i interacted earlier this week when he picked up something that i put on freecycle, got some lunch and then caught a bus back towards burien, which, strangely enough, was being driven by a guy that plays in la banda gozona with me. i made it back to burien, where i wandered around for a while, went to my appointment with ned, and then called jack who had my car ready. i then got on another bus back to jack’s shop, and got home around 6:00. at no time during the course of the day did i have to wait longer than 5 minutes for a bus… which sort of makes me wonder why we have so many traffic problems around here…
in spite of the fact that “it’s not an import”, jack had some insight as to what might be wrong with the car, specifically the thermostat is probably acting sluggish, which would make sense: i hadn’t driven it for a few days before thursday, which is when it started acting strangely, and i have driven it every day since then, which is why it’s not acting sluggish now. he also said that the exhaust manifold needs a new gasket, which he said he could replace for a “couple hours” of labour… he did show me the exhaust manifold, however, and showed me what i had to do to replace the gasket, so i’m thinking…
now i’m going to go to the auto-parts store and purchase a shop manual for my car, and get the low-down on replacing an exhaust manifold gasket.
another week closer to the eschaton…
Future Chaos: There Is No “Plan B” – sooo… have fun while you can, i guess, ’cause if plan A fails, there’s going to be a whole hell of a lot of chaos, almost immediately, and there’s nothing you as an individual, and not much you as a group of well armed and well prepared people can do about it… 😐
It’s the 1930s car that was meant to change American lives. And now the Dymaxion’s back. – one of my lifelong dreams has been to own and/or drive a dymaxion car. maybe someone will be able to pull it off this time. 🙂
Tooth Regeneration Gel Could Replace Painful Fillings – Could this new gel be the biggest dental breakthrough since the introduction of fluoride?
Squishable, Breathing Smart Phones – for high paid geeks with way too much time on their hands.
David Harmer GOP Tea Party congressional nominee from California says ‘Abolish’ public schools and California shooter says he saw Glenn Beck as ‘schoolteacher’ and Republicans’ ‘scary’ immigrant photo depicts Mexicans in Mexico, photographer reveals – we’re still losing to these morons?!?
and this is for those who think that the budget crisis that we’re currently in the middle of is the fault of the democrats: Democrats shrank US spending, deficit in last fiscal year, figures show – and we’re still losing to these morons?!? 😐 admittedly the democrats are nothing to write home about, but they’re not the source of the current problems, and i really wish the republicans would remember that when they put all these ads on TV about how evil the democrats have been recently: we’re still recovering from the bush years, which were principally republican, and we will be for quite a while yet, so just cool it.
Multnomah County stops prosecuting dozens of illegal acts as crimes or Oregon county decriminalizes heroin, meth, cocaine and shoplifting, among others – but the federal government is going to continue to prosecute drug crimes anyway, even if states legalise or decriminalise them, so there’s really not an awful lot of news here.
Holder: US will enforce marijuana laws despite how Californians may vote – this is the reason why the only way we’re ever going to make any kind of substantial change in the “war on drugs” is to legalise them at the federal level…
according to a new RAND study, either Legalizing pot won’t hinder Mexican cartels or Marijuana Legalization Would Markedly Cut Mexican Drug Cartel Profits… you decide which is really the truth… 😐 here’s the Marijuana Policy Project’s spin on it – What Exactly Did that RAND Study Say About Cartels and Marijuana?
Tracking devices used in school badges – big brother waches over your kids, too, whether they’re at school or not.
Microsoft’s search engine will mine Facebook data – another reason not to use either microsoft or facebook. i have placed a directive in my robots.txt file that specifically denies microsoft’s search engines from indexing my site (while allowing everyone else), and i don’t use facebook… but my wife does…
Facebook is ‘killing privacy for commercial gain’ – a law against facebook… now there’s an idea… 🙂
Can a Person Be Moral without Being a Christian? – hint: his answer is no. “[I]f God is not your god, you will serve Buddha. Or, if not Buddha, perhaps Allah. Or, if not Allah, perhaps Baal. Or, if not Baal, perhaps Confucius.” let’s see: buddhism, confucianism and islam are recognised, but i don’t know of any modern baal-worshippers, except for jews, and, by extension, “christians”, who worship בעל (ba’al, or “lord”)… and he apparently doesn’t recognise hindus, or jaina, or taoists… maybe i shouldn’t expect so much. i keep this guy in my regular news feed primarly because he is so absurd. he gets more absurd with every new post. maybe he’ll follow the pingback to my site and learn how truly absurd i find his views. maybe not. who knows…
Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are Related – isn’t internet wonderful?
NSFW – the National Schools Film Week, you pervert… 🙂 now if it was NSFW it wouldn’t be so bad…
snrk… 8*
domain names registered in the Cook Islands end with a “.ck”, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. the following “Community of Interest” suffixes are available for domain names registered in the Cook Islands:
it makes me wonder how they would feel about me registering “suck-my.co.ck” or something along those lines…
another historic person has died
Benoit Mandelbrot, Mathematician, Dies at 85
no story about how i met him once, because i didn’t. but you know who he was anyway:
The Mandelbrot Monk is an article about the fictional monk Udo of Aachen who did not discover the mandelbrot set 700 years earlier. isn’t internet wonderful? 😐
symbolic links
they’re called “aliases” on a mac, and i don’t remember what they’re called on windows – probably something like “links” or “bookmarks” or something, who knows – but the way they work is basically the same on whatever platform you’re using, and that is to direct you somewhere other than where you thought you were going.
on web servers, they’re especially useful when you have moved a bunch of pages from one place to another. you move the pages wherever you want them to be, then you make a symbolic link to the first page, and place that where the old first page used to be, and then when people go to your old URI, they’re automatically redirected to your new URI and you don’t have to do anything else.
the way you make a symbolic link on a -x machine, is like this: go to the terminal, navigate to where you want the link, and type in ln -s <the absolute path to the document you're linking to> <the name of the new link>
the way you make an “alias” on a mac, or a “link” (or whatever it’s called) on windows, is to select the icon for the file that you want to make a symbolic link of, and select “Make Alias” or “Make Link” from the “File” menu. alternately, you can select “Make Alias” or “Make Link” from a context menu as well…
but here’s the big point: an alias that was made on a mac (and, presumably, a bookmark made on windows) will not work the same way that a symbolic link will work, when the disk you’re working on is a -x server.
in that case, an “alias” on a mac brings you to a page of gibberish, which starts off with
book????mark????0???0???´ê???????3š<??H??T??H??H??H??H??????????Æå???icns?åÆics#???Hÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ???À?à?ð?ø?ü?ü?ü?ü?ü?ü?ü?ü?ü?ü?üis32??Q?„?…?þþýýúò¦„? ÿüûûùñ¦ëƒ?ÿ€úøð¦ùë‚?ÿ€ù÷ï‘€¦?? ÿöÏh²À‡ÒÙÞ? ÿ훢»°i³èò? ÿçÝà¢a4‰ùü? ÿâÌš+$ ¤Êü? ÿÓϵ…\Êêü? ÿѺà3€çàû? ÿê´µ×Üããëû? ÿêêÓÍÜßéêÿ??‡ÿ??‰???„?Ž…?þþýýúò§Ž„? ÿüûûùñ§ëŽƒ?ÿ€úøð§ù뎂?ÿ€ù÷ï’€§?Ž? ÿõÑ–ÝìµÍÙÞ? ÿ¾Wqà÷Á¨Öò? ÿ“J^•È˜–Îü? ÿqAV‰{C—¨ü? ÿ_LNac0™Ÿü? ÿŒ:eG&Tˆ°û? ÿåV4\_l—áû? ÿêêžpˆ©ãêÿ??‡ÿ??‰???„?…?þþýýúò¨„? ÿüûûùñ¨ëƒ?ÿ€úøð¨ùë‚?ÿ€ù÷ï“€¨?? ÿôÖÂèõÒÆÙÞ? ÿ 9^Ýÿåv¬ò? ÿZ†ðÚyXü? ÿ.<ÍÂYEü? ÿ7 Rtv+.ü? ÿƒ *E/ ƒû? ÿåO DÖû? ÿêê•S[†àêÿ??‡ÿ??‰??s8mk??
:|
the only way i know of to make a symbolic link on a -x machine is to use the terminal, and the only other option is to give around 25 different webmasters in different countries the option of changing their web pages so that they link to the right page... which isn't going to happen any time soon.
so i try to SSH to my -x machine, only to discover that i don't have SSH access.
according to the host provider's FAQ, they only provide SSH permissions if you have a "legitimate" reasons for them. so far the new host provider has been providing exempary service... let's hope it continues that way. :|
ETA: they gave me what i need, and 95% of my 404 messages now point to the correct place (the remaining ones are for old internal links from 2003 to 2008). for example, this link and this link now point to the same place, whereas, previously, the former gave you a 404 message. :) happy web designer :)
Dame Joan Sutherland
Soprano Dame Joan Sutherland has died, age 83
i was in an opera with Dame Sutherland when i was 18 or so. i believe it was bizet’s Carmen in which i was a supernumerary. i remember, one time, just before a performance, i couldn’t find my dresser (even the supernumeraries had individual dressers, because the costumes were so complicated), so i went to find her, dressed only in a pair of tights, and ran into Dame Sutherland in the hallway, who commented that she liked my costume, and wished that there were more of them in opera…
little did i know at the time that i would end up being the tuba player for a pit band at a burlesque theatre…
lucy
moe’s latest dog, lucy, is an outstanding shepherd dog (she’s a border collie), and moe wants to breed her. lucy is in heat, and according to moe’s tests, she’ll be ovulating within the next three days or so, so she is leaving tomorrow to go to the ranch where the dog lucy is being bred to lives… she’s transporting adolescents across state lines for immoral purposes… wonderful… 😉
this is one of my five all-time favourite songs
I Don’t Work For A Living – Malcolm Dalglish & Grey Larsen
I don’t work for a living,
I get along alright without,
I don’t toil all day,
I suppose it’s because I’m not built that way.
Some people work for love,
And say it’s all sunshine and gain,
But if I can’t get sunshine without any work,
I’d rather stay out in the rain.Give me a nail and a hammer,
And a picture to hang on the wall,
Give me a strong stepladder,
So that I won’t fall,
Give me a bottle of whiskey,
And a barrel of Strong’s best ale,
And I bet you I’ll hang up that picture
If somebody drives the nail.
this is from their 1978 album The First of Autumn, which i first heard at my friend deirdre’s house in 1980 or there abouts, and it very quickly became the song that inspired my life. at this point, thanks to my brain injury, i can honestly say that it’s pretty much true, too. 🙂
Happy Genocide Day!
Teachers of children
in the United States of America
wrote this date on blackboards everywhere
and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy:
in the United States of America
wrote this date on blackboards everywhere
and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy:
1492
The teachers told the children that this was the date the continent
was discovered by human beings.
Actually, millions of human beings were leading
full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492.
That was simply when sea pirates came to cheat and rob and kill them.
— from Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
another week closer to the eschaton…
Think US politics are absurd? Brazilians elect actual clown to Congress – brazil has its collective shit together in more than two ways that i’ve noticed recently… maybe american politicians should be paying more attention to the brazilians…
60% of countries will be bankrupt within 50 years – the only hopeful thing about the future is that i will very likely die before that happens.
Drug cops smash into wrong house, terrorize elderly couple and Pot raid at school turns up tomatoes – if it were legal, they could be spending their time going after real criminals instead of hassling immigrant grandparents, and kids about their tomatoes… 😐
Why Comcast can (but probably won’t) read your e-mails, IMs – every now and then i need to remind myself why i am NOT a comcast customer. this will do for a couple of years, until something else awful and terrifying is revealed about their policies…
GPS directs driver to death in Spain’s largest reservoir or Un hombre fallece tras hundirse su coche en la presa de La Serena – i, for one, welcome our new, robot overlords… or not…
Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back and Student finds tracking device on his car; FBI demands it back – what…?
Hello, this is your ISP. You have been disconnected from internet. Have a nice day. – if micro$awft gets its way, this could happen to you if you get any kind of malware or virus. more reason to use linux, of course, but why would anyone think this is a good idea to begin with is a little mystifying.
Android phone auto reverts jailbreaks – i agree, that people who are required to pay for a piece of hardware to make their lives easier, should be able to use that piece of hardware for whatever they choose. the company from which you buy a cell phone does not retain an “interest” in the hardware, once you buy it… much as i like the approach taken by the makers of the android cell phone, i don’t think they should be able to arbitarily “take back” a phone that has been modified.
Woman screamed about God while destroying art and California Stem Cell Agency Rewards Blasphemy While Admitting the Humanity of Embryos Slated for Destruction – yep, people are still concerned about what other people do being “blasphemy”. in one case, a woman broke into a protective plexiglass housing and destroyed a piece of art, and in the other, people, for whom it did not make any difference, were “forced” to comply with the wishes of the people who were crying “blasphemy” and take down an otherwise inoffensive piece of art. i wrote to the contact person for CIRM (i encourage you to write to him as well) and sent him this:
i am not offended by any language, but because of the fact that you have seen fit to remove the poems in honour of stem cell awareness day, i can no longer see them, and that offends me.
No-one has the right not to be offended.
— John CleeseA truly great library contains something within it to offend everyone.
— Jo GodwinWhat is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
— Salman RushdieBeing offended is a natural consequence of leaving the house.
— Fran LebowitzThe most efficacious method of dealing with deviancy is to ignore, to the furthest point of our tolerance, those items which we find offensive.
— Ilbert GeisChristianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.
— Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet), 1694-1778
by the way, if you’re interested, the poems that were too “blasphemous” to post on CIRMs web site, can be seen here. USAToday is good for something after all.
Insane Clown Posse is actually a Christian band, and nobody knew – i knew there was a fundamental reason why i didn’t like them apart from their encouragement of drunken violence…
10/10/10
101010 = 42 (binary)
101010 = XXX (roman)
Red Badge of Stoopid
idea from stephen pastis
mouse and snake
so it’s time to feed the snake again.
the last time i fed the snake, i went down to the place where i buy live mice, and they were in the middle of packing up, in preparation for closing their business down permanently. they told me that they were still going to be in the business of providing rats, mice and other vermin for feeders, but they couldn’t afford to keep the business going. they gave me a phone number, which i labeled “feeder mice james”.
i called the number yesterday. there was no answer, but a message said that if i left my number, they’d call me back. they never called back. this doesn’t look promising.
i called again this morning. someone answered, and they knew who i was, which is as promising as i could have expected. they said that i should come over and get mice, so i did. i went over to this random house that i have been driving past on a more-or-less regular basis for about five years, and picked up three adult mice. so far, so good.
i get home and put one of the mice in the tank with the snake. he hisses at it, and strikes at it, but is obviously not interested in the mouse as food.
currently, the mouse has taken refuge on top of the thermometer in the tank, which is probably not the best place for hiding, but who can say what goes through the mind of a prey species when they are hunted in a closed environment.
he may be interested later. one time it took four days to convince him that mice were, actually, food. once the first one goes down, the others usually follow fairly quickly. however, there is, always, the possibility that he is just not hungry, in which case he usually develops a relationship with the mouse, and they end up sleeping together. at that point, i have, in the past, just returned the mice to the store, and come back for them in a couple weeks. but because of the fact that i am now purchasing the mice from some random person, i wonder what his policies are, on accepting “returns” of “uneaten mice”. 😐
pictures
there were three blue jays arguing over the fresh suet i put out yesterday. i was only able to get this, more or less clear photo of one of them before they were chased away by the hummingbirds, of which i was not able to get a clear shot. we have a whole herd of hummingbirds that live somewhere around here, and they’re territorial little buggers, even taking to dive-bombing me, on occasion.
these are a couple of contestants from the 2010 European Beard and Moustache Championships.
another week closer to the eschaton…
Feds want backdoors built into VoIP and email US Would Make Internet Wiretaps Easier – yes, the united states government wants to listen in on your phone calls, and analyse your email messages, because you might be a terrorist. forget about innocent until proven guilty, forget about warrants, if these people don’t get what they want, heads will roll… and they might just roll anyway.
Web’s creator slams ‘blight’ of web disconnection laws – tim berniers-lee has a point, and we should listen to him…
2 out of 3 Android apps use private data ‘suspiciously’ – DON’T. BE. EVIL! 😐
Red Hat says end software patents – the supreme court heard the Bilski case earlier this year, and it ruled that the patentability of intangible products should be reduced. red hat takes it one step further, and says that the patentability of intangible products should be eliminated entirely, turning the entire software industry on its ear. it’s a great idea, but it’ll never work out in practice, because people are still too greedy.
Downloads are not performances – despite the fact that i belong to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), i actually think this has the potential of being a good thing. whaddaya know?
Microsoft surrenders Live Spaces future to WordPress – part of me wants to laugh at the people who signed up for the micro$awft me-too web 2.0 hype, but part of me wonders if wp is really the best choice, if micro$awft chose it to replace their hype… 😛
Authorities Plan To Trawl Phone Calls And E Mails For Signs Of “Resentment Toward Government” – my guess is that they won’t have to go far, especially since my resentment towards government is plainly evident, and has been for quite a number of years… 😐
US Is ‘Practically Owned’ by China – don’t get too comfortable, the new bosses will be arriving soon…
The Proof Is In The Numbers: America Is Getting Poorer – where’s that hope-y, change-y stuff that they were talking about? it’s about time for that stuff to start kicking in, isn’t it?
Attempts to Ban Fake Marijuana Are Further Proof of Prohibition’s Failure – more flap about K2 and the valiant, but ultimately futile attemps to ban it. all the more reason to legalise cannabis. especially when the creator of the substance that makes K2 popular says this about attempts to ban his substance: “It’s not going to be effective, is the ban on marijuana effective?”
Key ingredient staves off marijuana memory loss – now that we’ve lightened up (a little bit), we’re discovering that cannabis really is good for something. The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition – legalizing drugs would save roughly $41,300,000,000 ($41.3 billion) per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition, and produce roughly $46,700,000,000 ($46.7 billion) annually in tax revenue. and we’re still fighting a “war” that we can’t win?
Barefaced cheek on Google Street View – ireland welcomes the google street view cameras with characteristic abandon.
Boss Hogs Bacon Chocolate Sueyts – yum… 🙂
no more tassel envy
Non-Sequitur
getting back to International Blasphemy Day, this cartoon has been pulled from some (upwards of 20 different) newspapers, because it is “offensive”.
personally, i don’t see it, but apparently it takes all kinds…
then again, as winston churchill said, “it doesn’t take all kinds, there just are all kinds.”
california decriminalises cannabis
California Reduces Its Penalty for Marijuana
Marijuana legalization measure gets big lift
Schwarzenegger signs bill reducing offense for marijuana possession – “Notwithstanding my opposition to Proposition 19, however, I am signing this measure because possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is an infraction in everything but name” – it’s a step in the right direction, but nowhere near close enough to even think about celebrating yet: what about medical cannabis? what about people who grow? what about the feds?? cannabis should not just be decriminalised, because it’s not a crime to use cannabis, in exactly the same way that it is currently not a crime to use alcohol.
Rootless Root
spam, again…
i don’t often admit to hating pretty much anything, but i will admit, whole-heartedly, to hating spam with a white-hot passion… 😛
i’m going to use this as an example of how i determine something which is not labled spam, is actually spam.
the following is a text-dump of the entire message, with the headers intact. the only thing i have done is to obscure my host server.
Return-path: <x> Envelope-to: [email protected] Delivery-date: Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:40:48 -0700 Received: from hybridel by x with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from) id 1P1d2m-0005OP-Im for [email protected]; Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:40:48 -0700 To: "salamandir" <[email protected]> Subject: Enquiry from Hybrid Elephant X-PHP-Script: www.hybridelephant.com/contact_us.php for 122.163.114.169 From: "Randall Tuttle" <[email protected]> MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: osCommerce Mailer Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <E1P1d2m-0005OP-Im@x> Sender: <hybridel@x> Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:40:48 -0700 X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.583091, version=1.2.0 X-UID: Status: RO X-Status: R X-KMail-EncryptionState: N X-KMail-SignatureState: N X-KMail-MDN-Sent: We noticed that you are not at the top of the search engines for a number of your key terms. We have helped companies similar to yours to achieve top organic rankings. Please reply to this message and we will prepare a special proposal for you, to show you how we can achieve similar results for you.
first, i look at the subject line: “Subject: Enquiry from Hybrid Elephant”
this is not labled “spam” because it’s an enquiry from my web site, which means that if it turns out to be spam, i can’t report it, because it doesn’t have a message path that can be traced. i get a lot of spammers trying to abuse my response form (hint, it only sends to me, so it’s not much use for spamming), so that increases the probability that it is, actually, spam.
next, i look at the sender name and email address. usually people who submit legitimate enquiries to my business have an email address that doesn’t stand out. this one – From: "Randall Tuttle" <[email protected]> – stands out: “Randall Tuttle” has an email address that includes the name “rachelle”? the probability that it actually is spam just went up to 99.98%. i have never seen an example of a message that comes from someone who is apparently male, which has an email address that includes a female name, unless they were trying to mislead people in some way.
as i said, because of the fact that it is an enquiry from my web site, i can’t report it, but i can delete it without even reading further.
but i am going to force myself to read further, because deep down, i am a masochist… or something like that…
We noticed that you are not at the top of the search engines for a number of your key terms.now i’m starting to get perturbed… i knew i shouldn’t have read any further… patience, patience… 😐
yes, i know that. it is because i haven’t gotten to the top yet. if you google “html escape sequences” you’ll probably notice my site within the top 5 on the list. that is because i have offered the only complete list of html escape seqences on the net, for the longest time, without changing its URI. i haven’t been offering incense for anywhere near as long as i have had that list of escape sequences on the net. not only that, but i just upgraded from a flat html structure to a php/database structure within the past couple of years. one of the advantages is that if you search for specific products, like “aparajita special durbar incense” you will find my web site on the first page, despite the fact that i have upgraded my web site recently.
yeah, i’m not at the top of the list for all of my keywords, but i’m getting there, and if i leave my web site alone for long enough, i’ll probably get there without using possibly illegal and most likely nefarious ways to get there sooner, which is what you’re probably suggesting…
We have helped companies similar to yours to achieve top organic rankings.organic ratings? organic ratings!? nothing about the web is “organic” in any sense of the term. and if they were, in some miraculous way, “organic” ratings, then why would a person named “Randall” be trying to sell them to me, writing to me from “rachelle”‘s email address, at gmail.com?
Please reply to this message and we will prepare a special proposal for you, to show you how we can achieve similar results for you.reveal more about how my mailserver works to you, and give you new and innovative ways to break into my web site and email server, so that you can “prepare a special proposal” for me? i don’t think so, especially since you haven’t actually proven to me that you have actually done that for anyone.
PLONK!!!
for those of you unfamiliar with the term, “plonk” is the sound a spam message makes when it is deleted,
or the sound of a person’s email address being added to a “do not send” or “banned” list.
for those of you unfamiliar with the term, “plonk” is the sound a spam message makes when it is deleted,
or the sound of a person’s email address being added to a “do not send” or “banned” list.
oh, by the way, the form gives me a little bit more information about the sender than he probably realises:
X-PHP-Script: www.hybridelephant.com/contact_us.php for 122.163.114.169aha, his IP address. a quick “host 122.163.114.169” tells me that his computer is named “abts-north-dynamic-169.114.163.122.airtelbroadband.in” which is a dynamic range coming from AirTel Broadband, in india.
yeah, i’m really going to respond to a person who didn’t give me his real name, offering sketchy SEO services from a wireless connection in india… 😐
OOTF#32
Happy International Blasphemy Day
happy international blasphemy day! blasphemy is “impious utterance or action concerning god or sacred things” or “irreverence toward holy personages, religious artifacts, customs, and beliefs.” it comes from greek words βλάπτω which means to “hurt” or “injure” and φήμη which means “fame” or “report”. essentially, “blasphemy” is something that we can do that causes a “bad report” for God.
if that “god” is not unchanging, limitless and eternal, that “god” is not a God at all, and we have no need to worry about creating a “bad report” for him.
if, on the other hand, that God is unchanging, limitless and eternal, then nothing that we, as human beings, can do will ever affect that God, and His love (or whatever you may call it) for us will never be affected by anything that we can do, regardless of how “blasphemous” it may seem to be.
therefore, it is my opinion that “blasphemy” means “something that can get you in trouble with another human being”, and it is, therefore, more-or-less meaningless except when used as a way to keep people under control, and then only when the people are scared enough to believe it is actually possible for “god” to do bad things to them.
i am not that scared.
for “christians”:
for “muslims”:
for “jews”:
for buddhists…? hindus…? anyone else even have the concept of blasphemy?
[previous]
by the way…
LinkedIn Zeus spam run targets prospective business marks – i’ve been getting this spam for three weeks and i haven’t picked up the ZeuS trojan yet…
of course, i haven’t been clicking on any links in mail that crosses my desk labled as “spam”, and i have been reporting messages that claim to be from LinkedIn that are labled “spam” for three weeks… i have opened (as text-only, not as html) precisely one message that claimed to be from LinkedIn that was labled “spam”, about three weeks ago, to determine that it was, in fact, spam, and that has been it.
once again, the principal reason that email should not be sent as “formatted” or containing html code, is because, if it is, you can’t tell immediately that things are not as they should be. most people don’t think to look at the bottom of their screen, at the status bar of their email client or browser, to make sure that the link that they think they’re clicking is actually the link they’re clicking. most people assume that when they see a link, if they click on it they will be taken to the site indicated in the link, but that is NOT TRUE and especially so when the link is in an email message.
if i type in a link – http://www.hybridelephant.com/ – if that link is “active” (which this one is not), most people would assume that clicking it will take you to the site indicated, which is Hybrid Elephant. however, if you see the words Hybrid Elephant with no link, unless you look down, at the status bar of your browser (because you are viewing it in a web page, which is formatted using HTML), you won’t know that the link takes you to somewhere you may not have been expecting.
email was originally intended for communication on a very basic level. the web was intended for delivering “richer”, more “complete” content. you can say “check this out” without saying it in letters that are “formatted”. it may be “cooler” to say it in bold, purple, 72-point letters, but if you send such a message, the only thing you’re doing is forcing people who may not want it, to get a large quantity of essentially meaningless code along with a relatively short message, and sending people the possibility of getting their machines infected with a virus without you or them knowing about it, until it’s too late.
it not only saves space, but doesn’t have the potential for screwing up someone’s entire machine, as this LinkedIn/ZeuS spam tries to do.
HTML in Email is EVIL!
TEXT-ONLY EMAIL!
THE WEB IS THE PLACE FOR HTML-FORMATTING!
😛
the web is in trouble
according to ARPAgeddon (IPv4 Countdown), there are less than 240 days until there will be no more IPv4 addresses to hand out to people, and the conversion to IPv6 is going less-than-smoothly.
the problem is with NAT (Network Address Translation) and wireless “devices”, mostly in china. instead of “dotted quad” 32-bit addresses – something like 194.169.203.3 – that typify IPv4 addresses, the new IPv6 addresses have 128 bits, and the “Network Address Translation” software, which works in theory, is still a little slow off the mark when it comes down to actually doing the kinds of “translation” it is designed to do.
US.gov set IPv6 upgrade deadlines, but they’ve targeted 2012 for completion and, as i said, there will be no more IPv4 addresses long before that happens. my own computer has IPv6 software, but i had to disable it because it wasn’t working correctly, and, as far as i have been able to tell, there hasn’t been an upgrade package that has included a fix for IPv6 in at least 6 months.
presumably there are enough people that have functioning IPv6 computers that eventually the switch will be made, but until then, there will be no new addresses, and/or an only partially functioning internet with IPv4 computers that may or may not be able to connect…
final scores for the NADAC national championships
email from moe: “We missed 3rd place by 0.76 of 1 point. Total scores were between 680-700 after 8 rounds… and it came down to less than 1 point. That’s a competetive 8″ class”
so, zora is almost the third fastest dog in north america and canada: less than 1 point separate her from the third place winner… 🙂
my guess is that there will be additional information on moe’s blog eventually.
another week closer to the eschaton…
The City That Ended Hunger – Buckminster Fuller said that we, as a people, have posessed the technology for 50 years (and he said this almost 50 years ago) to create a world where nobody has to work to survive. Why Bother Working At A Job You Hate? and The RICH Economy are my attempts at changing the world’s consciousness, but it may be that Belo Horizonte, brazil’s fourth largest city, has taken it one step further. brazil has a number of other interesting features upon which i have commented previously.
meanwhile, back in hell america, Building sand castles on Florida’s beaches is illegal – this is how BP is hoping to make you think that the oil spill is gone.
What the TSA isn’t saying about Full Body Scanners and Your Right to Opt Out – Say “I Opt Out.” Every Time. – has an interesting URI – Don’tScan.Us – and is there to remind everyone that, when travelling by air, you have the right to say “I OPT OUT” when confronted with a TSA request to what amounts to a strip search. also Portable, rapid DNA analysis tech developed – Big Brother doesn’t care whether or not you have fingerprints, and is interested in your DNA instead… more orwellian doublethink: Welfare is Employment Rights are Privileges War is Peace Illness is Health Collapse Is Recovery
Judge orders lesbian reinstated to Air Force and yet the congress in it’s infinite wisdom has decided that, even though a judge also ruled that DADT is unconstitutional, they’re not going to do anything to change it at this time. correct me if i’m wrong, but the judge that said that DADT is unconstitutional basically said that it’s against the law for the military to enforce the law as it currently stands, and still, congress feels that it’s okay to leave the law as it stands, right? that settles it, our government, and likely the governments of the countries in the rest of the world as well (since they all cooperate with each other, more or less) is irreparably broken. it’s time for that major shift in the way people think that i’ve mentioned before to actually start happening now…
and, by the way, now there’s Irrefutable Proof the Bush Tax Cuts Were a Miserable Failure – and we’re still losing to these morons…
despite the fact that Yes on Prop 19 Holds Steady Lead, 47%-42%, in Latest SurveyUSA Poll, this is what supporters of prop 19 are up against: Ex-Drug Czar Bill Bennett: Showtime’s “Weeds” is “Damaging,” Jonas Brothers Should Fight Prop 19 – regardless of whether prop 19 passes or not, however, Federal judge rules Colorado’s medical marijuana law is no defense for US drug charges. california can legalise all it wants, but until the federal government changes its mind, people will still end up going to jail for smoking a joint. and, while we’re at it, T-Mobile Claims Right to Censor Text Messages – big brother just got a little bigger and a little less like your brother.
along the same lines, according to Chapter 69.51A RCW on Medical "marijuana" (which is actually called “cannabis”, but i’m not arguing at this point), apparently i wouldn’t qualify anyway… oh well… 8/
Twitter blames website upgrade for re-introducing XSS hole – hopefully, the last word on my battle with twitter and their most recent cross-site scripting bug… which is still gone on my machine, but presumably that’s because i deleted my account before this latest round happened, and when they re-introduced it, i didn’t have an account to infect any longer…
twitter… 😐 feh.
Trojan poses as skeleton key jailbreak utility – but it only works on iPhones… wait, what? 8) heh heh heh… i am so glad i’m not a mac-head any longer…
GoDaddy.com Goes on the Auction Block – recently i read a couple of articles detailing how a whole bunch (<200) of wordpress blogs hosted by godaddy got hacked. i don’t know whether selling godaddy will make things better or worse, but it’s one of the reasons why i don’t use godaddy to begin with.
IE captain flees Microsoft for Google – when i was first getting into testing software, back in 1996, i attended a planning meeting in advance of the release of IE3 (which was still crawling with bugs, in spite of bill gates’ claim that micro$not released “bug free” software), and chris wilson was there, although he wasn’t as “important” then as he later became. however giving up micro$hit for google is sort of a lateral move for someone who is allegedly as “important” as he is… and, given that he is ultimately responsible for such travesties as IE4 and IE6, i would think that google would have second thoughts about hiring him…
How do you copy 60 million files? – yet another reason why linux rocks, and you should use it and not that crap operating system from redmond.
Nuclear Winter And Peace – look… another article by Fidel Castro… you might get the impression that he’s actually changed the way he thinks recently, and that i agree with him now…
Oops! Billboard spelling error creates embarrassment
The true history of the Koran in America – reports of qur’ans in american libraries go back at least to 1683, and the first qur’an to be published in america was in 1806, over 100 years later. both thomas jefferson and john adams owned one and read it frequently… just sayin’…
Pope’s astronomer says he would baptise an alien if it asked him – unfortunately, is not a joke… nor is this: Christian group declares jct 9 on M25 cursed, although it took me several readings to confirm that it was, in fact, totally serious… what?!?
Church of Body Modification – this has been the subject of a bunch of spam messages i have been receiving recently, but it’s a real thing, and it looks fairly interesting…
Fabrican – it gives the reference to “jeans so tight you must have sprayed them on” a whole new meaning…
NADAC 2010 National Championship
zora took 4th place over all and made 2 mistakes in 12 runs… and she was the smallest dog in her class by a lot.
😀 ☺☺ 😀
more from wyoming
they made it into the finals!!! 😀
i don’t know how accurate that clock is, or how it synchronises with the “official” clock, but moe said that the worst she can do at this point is the FOURTH FASTEST DOG IN THE COUNTRY, which is nothing to sneeze at. 😀
update from wyoming…
ZORA IS IN THE FINALS!! WOO HOO!! 😀
Rockit-Doggie™ Takes Off!
100925, 17:10:07 pdt
100925 17:10:08 pdt
100925 later in the evening
bits of random stuff that only means anything to me…
hey, check this out…
NADAC 2010 Agility Championships LIVE STREAM!!
zora ran that course in sixty seconds flat, with one error for this morning’s run (making her 5th place). moe said that she hasn’t gotten her score for the second run, but overall she said that zora is in third place.
funny picture
update from wyoming
round 1 winner: zora! 😀
moe, pe(s)ts & other stuff
moe and zora the papillon have gone to wyoming for the national dog agility championships. they took lucy the psychotic border collie with them, and i’m holding down the fort with the two “old” dogs… and three cats, a snake and a bird. stanley the bird is chattering, and the dog who can hear (magick) is hiding under my desk, because that’s about as far away from stanley as she can get. the dog who can’t hear (paddy) is asleep behind me.
i hope moe does well at the championship. i asked her what sort of chance there was of zora winning some sort of prize, and she said that she’ll be happy if she qualifies for the finals. i don’t know what that means, but i still hope that zora wins some sort of prize… being the owner of a dog that is a national champion is about as close as i’m ever going to get to having that sort of fame myself…
i was entertained by the cats entertaining themselves with a squeeky catnip mouse. there is definitely going to have to be two or three more of those hanging around, because kitty chaos was definitely enjoyable to watch, although they gave up too quickly, because it very quickly developed to the point where one of them was hogging the mouse and wouldn’t let the others play.
i am no longer sick, but i am not completely well yet. i was about 95% yesterday, and i would say that it’s crept up to 96% or 97% today. my guess is that getting old means that i don’t recover as quickly from being sick, or that i notice the things that aren’t quite normal more than i did when i was younger, or – most likely – a combination of the two, but whatever it is, i find that after i’ve been sick, the period between my actual sickness and when i have recovered fully, really sucks: i want to do stuff, like grade and/or scrape the driveway, but it requires so much effort that i can’t do a practical amount of work before i’m completely exhausted and have to rest for a couple of hours before i can even think about doing more… plus my ears are alternately plugged up, or not, and my nose is alternately plugged up, or not – i burned a stick of incense on my desk, not more than an arm’s length away from my nose, and i couldn’t smell anything… and taking something like “day-quil” makes the symptoms go away, but it doesn’t make me able to smell, and it gives the world this kind of foggy semi-euphoria that interferes with my thinking…
sickness, music and a dog with wheels
i was sick yesterday, but i went to play with snake suspenderz at the pike place market busker festival which i managed to pull off without too much sickness. playing with two other, respected buskers, howlin’ hobbit and thaddeus spae was only made that much more of an honour for me because the pike place market preseveration and development association (the outfit which licenses buskers at the market) has decided, in their infinite wisdom to ban music played on electronically amplified equipment and… wait for it… brass instruments… which, of course, means that any other time of year, thad and hobbit can busk at the market, but i can’t. where’s the justice in that, ‘eh?
i wasn’t able to get any relevant pictures of snake suspenderz, since i was playing with them at the time, but i was able to get a picture of the amazingly fearless dog in a wheelie contraption that took the place of his hind legs, which apparently didn’t work all that well. i believe the dog’s name was Rover. most dogs that have encountered my tuba have an almost instinctive fear of it: i don’t even have to play it, but they want to keep about as far away from it as possible. rover was completely different, however, and rolled right up to it and gave it a thorough sniffing… and then rolled away in search of something more interesting. it was as though he hadn’t just encountered the most dog-frightening piece of musical equipment that i own.
i’m feeling a lot better today, and have made up for the fact that i didn’t eat anything at all yesterday, by eating twice as much as i normally do today. it’s kind of weird, because i’m still congested and coughing up wads of green goo, but i’m starving. if i had eaten this much yesterday, i would have been a lot more sick than i was.
i spent a lot of spoons being sick yesterday. i’m definitely feeling better, however i’m not back to normal yet. maybe tomorrow.
i was poking around on the web this afternoon, and i came across these albums that i had back when albums were made of vinyl. Banish Misfortune and The First of Autumn by Malcolm Dalglish and Grey Larsen. i was able to download banish misfortune, but the first of autumn, which has the song “I Don’t work for a Living” on it, which has been one of my five all-time favourite songs ever since i first heard it, is only available as either an LP or a cassette. i have a turntable, but i don’t have an amplifier and the software to turn a LP into something that i can play with modern technology. wait! there’s a CD version of it at malcolm dalglish’s web site. these are albums that i haven’t even heard for 10 or 15 years, and i can still remember how excited i was to find music like this when i first came across them, almost 30 years ago.
Frank Zappa Day!
Spirit of Frank Zappa returns to Baltimore
The rocker’s exploits are rooted in L.A., but a twist of fate sends a special statue to his hometown.
By Richard Simon
September 20, 2010
Reporting from Baltimore — You’re, like, totally not going to believe this but Baltimore declared Sunday ” Frank Zappa Day,” dedicating a bust in his honor.
Grody to the max.
Seventeen years after the rocker’s death in Los Angeles, Zappa drew a large, fittingly eclectic crowd to a ceremony in the city where he was born.
“It’s about time he got the recognition he deserves,” said Greg Stinson, 50, accompanied by his 16-year-old son Matthew, also a Zappa fan.
The festivities included a concert by Zappa’s son Dweezil and his band, Zappa Plays Zappa; a library exhibit, “Zappa’s Baltimore: Rebels and Iconoclasts in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave”; and a temporary name for the street in front of the library, “Frank Zappa Way.”
“The spirit of Frank Zappa is alive and well in Baltimore,” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said.
The bronze bust of the mustachioed Zappa — one of rock’s great iconoclasts — was donated by Zappa fans from Lithuania, which has had its own Zappa sculpture in the capital, Vilnius, since 1995. Although Zappa never visited the Baltic country, he was admired there for his advocacy of free expression as well as for his music.
Zappa’s widow, Gail, attended the ceremony, along with Dweezil and two other children, Ahmet and Diva. A group of Lithuanians flew to Baltimore for the event.
Among those in attendance was the chief judge of the Baltimore City Circuit Court. John N. Prevas, 63, a Zappa fan since 1966, called the bust “a wonderful symbol of Baltimore’s cultural heritage and the fact that Frank was such a paradoxical icon for freedom.”
“We’re glad that he was born here, and even though he didn’t spend much time here after the age of 10, we’ve always felt he was one of us,” he added.
Zappa, who died of prostate cancer in 1993 at age 52, spent much of his life in Southern California, where he and his family moved when he was 10. Zappa’s L.A. exploits include getting thrown out of the Antelope Valley High School marching band in Lancaster after he was caught smoking in uniform, and recording with his then-teenage daughter, Moon Unit, the 1982 hit “Valley Girl,” a riff on San Fernando Valley culture.
The Zappa bust might have ended up in Los Angeles — if not for a cultural attache at the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius who happened to be from Baltimore. He suggested the city when the Lithuanian Zappa fans offered to donate the statue.
“I thought in L.A., it would kind of get lost,” said Carlos Aranaga, who was the cultural attache.
“Baltimore is the kind of the city that resonates with Zappa’s work,” he added, citing another iconoclastic Baltimorean, journalist and social critic H.L. Mencken.
The ceremony came 25 years after Zappa appeared at a Senate hearing to rail against censorship of rock lyrics and calls for an album rating system.
Though Zappa left Baltimore long ago, relatives there turned out for the dedication.
“I was a teenager the last time I saw him,” said cousin James A. Colimore Jr., 66, who came with his four adult children, who never met Zappa.
Colimore recalled “Frankie” visiting Baltimore and spending the summer at “Aunt Mary’s house” two doors away when Zappa was 16 and Colimore 14. “He came to Baltimore by train from California with” a stack of records that he played frequently, he said.
“He was cool back then,” Colimore said, recalling Zappa wearing shorts, a T-shirt and sandals when the East Coast was wearing jeans and high-top tennis shoes. He also recalled Zappa writing esoteric classical music on blank sheets of music paper with a quill pen.
Zappa has a street named after him in Berlin as well as an asteroid, Zappafrank, that orbits between Mars and Jupiter. He is also in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as “rock and roll’s sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic.”
Asked what her husband might have said about getting his own sculpture, Gail Zappa responded: “Frank might have said, ‘Preposterous.’ ”
another week closer to the eschaton…
Google guy "invaded teen users’ privacy" Google damages users’ brains – DON’T! BE! EVIL!
On the Advice of the FBI, Cartoonist Molly Norris Disappears From View – this is what happens when you take any religion to its logical conclusion.
Linus Torvalds outs himself as US citizen – gadzooks! i can’t wait to get out, and linus is on his way in… tell ya’ what, linus… i’ll trade you. Silence is the Death of Liberty is an example of why…
New 64-Bit Windows Rootkit Already ‘In The Wild’ – i’m tellin’ ya’… it’s pointless for micro$awft to create “new” operating systems, because they’re all based on former, defective, operating systems, and they’ve already got a built-in cadre of hackers who are already 98% of the way to breaking anything new that they come up with, before they release it. NOTICE TO MICKEY: the way to fix this is to use an entirely different approach, right from the very beginning – instead of basing your next 64-bit “super secure, can’t be hacked” OS on the same 8-bit kernel on which every other MS OS has been based, why not try something that no-one expects and build an entirely new kernel? what? you’re not creative enough to do that? oh, well forget it then…
Open source: a savvy bet, even in tough times – another way of putting it is that “free” is a very good way to keep me as a customer… Principia Mathematica Corporatica
Massive La. Fishkill Prompts Oil Spill Questions, Gulf Oil Refuses to Stay Hidden Underwater and In legal filings, BP says thousands of oil spill victims do not have right to sue – will it ever end? not during this decade…
Nation of Israel Buys @Israel Twitter Account From Miami Pornographer – bwaah hah hah hah hah! 8D
Purging Evil – society still has a very, very long way to go. my impression is that it will continue to be as bad as it is, if not worse, until there is a fundamental shift in the way we think and behave, and guys like cal thomas are preventing that fundamental shift from happening. yet another example (the web is full of them, there’s no counting how many stories like this there are) ‘Devil’ appears in bathroom tile – and, yes, both of these are serious. the people reporting the stories believe that they’re true, no matter how absurd they really are. more absurdity:
Scientists are creating ‘mice with human brains’ Montana Republican Party wants to make homosexuality a crime Mother Denies Heart Surgery For Infant, Cites Religion – these are not jokes.
Portugal
(thanks to drug soup, Narco Polo and Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies)
Portugal – A Real “Land of the Free”
In 2001, Portugal decriminalized personal possession of all drugs. Opponenents predicted a “parade of horrors.”
Since 2001, drug usage rates in many categories have decreased. Most notable was the large decrease in the 13 – 19 age group.
From 2001 – 2005, marijuana usage was the lowest in the EU.
Drug-related disease and mortality rates have decreased.
There is no serious push to reverse policy as by virtually every metric, decriminalization has been a “resounding success.”
The American government and media have ignored this story.
what would you do?
so i’ve been doing some maintenance on sedentarysousa dot com. i uploaded the last of the changes, and refreshed the browser, only to get one of those “Firefox can’t find the server at www.sedentarysousa.com” messages.
i restarted firefox. i flushed my DNS cache, and the DNS cache of my router. i rebooted the machine, and the router. i switched browsers five times, i switched machines three times, and i switched platforms twice, but i basically got “there is no server” messages from every browser and machine combination i tried.
i then went to browsershots dot org, which uses a whole bunch of different network nodes, a whole bunch of different browsers and three different platforms, and confirmed that sedentarysousa.com was up and working the way it’s supposed to, and that made me suspicious.
because of the fact that one of my machines is wireless, and my neighbour uses a different ISP and runs an unsecured wireless network, i can switch networks fairly easily, so i did, and sedentarysousa.com showed up without a problem.
aha, i thought. the problem is with drizzle (big surprise). so i called drizzle. sure enough, the drizzle tech support people – two of them! – confirmed that sedentarysousa – and only sedentarysousa – was “offline”.
they recommended that i “contact the host provider” and have them do a traceroute to my IP address, to figure out where the problem lies.
let me get this straight… they would rather that the host provider – who is conveniently located in London, doesn’t have a problem with anybody else, and only has a problem with one route connecting – should contact the person responsible for that route to fix the problem, instead of the person responsible for the route that’s having a problem being contacted by ME to fix the problem.
it sounds very much to me as though they are saying “we don’t care, we don’t have to” – which is not the way to keep me as a customer.
very likely, what they are saying, as well, is “we don’t actually know what the problem is, or how to fix it”, which is a valid point, but it makes me feel like they are deliberately misleading me, rather than being honest and admitting that they don’t know – which is also not the way to keep me as a customer.
what really irritates me is that, what with the network being the fluid place that it is, by the time i actually discover what the problem really is, it will have fixed itself and there won’t be any evidence that whatever was causing the problem really was causing the problem. it irritates me that random things like this happen on what should be a very predictable medium. 8P
ETA: so i had the host provider do a traceroute to my IP address:
traceroute to 216.162.193.190 (216.162.193.190), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 216-18-215-65.hosted.static.webnx.com (216.18.215.65) 0.316 ms 0.371 ms 0.436 ms
2 cr3-lax01.webnx.com (67.220.192.102) 0.294 ms 0.357 ms 0.410 ms
3 cust-webnx.ar10.owlax.us.easynet.net (207.162.207.13) 0.576 ms 0.723 ms 0.807 ms
4 ge-7-48.car1.SanJose2.Level3.net (4.59.0.69) 9.538 ms 9.535 ms 9.528 ms
5 * * *
6 ae-93-93.ebr3.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.69.134.237) 21.896 ms 19.398 ms 17.990 ms
7 ae-2-2.ebr3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.69.132.10) 12.894 ms 9.468 ms 9.456 ms
8 ae-71-78.ebr1.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.69.146.10) 16.406 ms ae-91-98.ebr1.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.69.146.26) 16.362 ms 16.354 ms
9 ae-7-7.car1.SaltLakeCity1.Level3.net (4.69.148.5) 22.380 ms 22.130 ms 22.771 ms
10 ae-11-11.car2.SaltLakeCity1.Level3.net (4.69.133.122) 22.099 ms 22.531 ms 22.291 ms
11 4.53.42.10 (4.53.42.10) 22.579 ms 22.703 ms 22.765 ms
12 208.110.128.254 (208.110.128.254) 38.893 ms 38.961 ms 38.866 ms
13 216.162.207.60 (216.162.207.60) 43.406 ms 42.878 ms 43.912 ms
14 * * *
15 * * *
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * * *
the place where the timeout occurred was 216.162.207.60, which is Internet Professionals & Network Solutions.
it IS drizzle’s problem! 8|
how ’bout another one?
come on, George, let’s not be ridiculous…
aha! … ‽ … !!
the unauthorised “authorisation dialogue” dialogue went away. i didn’t change anything locally (i did use NoScript to automatically block flash, but that was after i noticed that it was gone), or on the blog, which means that somebody must have noticed that something was wrong at the twitter end of things.
i’m not exactly sure how to approach this subject, but since i already have the reputation of being a little weird, i’ll start with an explanation of where i’m coming from:
POINT 1) for some time now, i’ve been under the distinct impression that my view of “reality” differs pretty significantly from just about everyone else’s view of reality. the most recent example of that is this public display, sponsored by a musem in california, which contained a tapestry house from a hindu family, that contained a swastika. the museum got complaints from the general public, so they posted a sign that basically said “this is an ancient hindu symbol, not the relatively recent nazi symbol that everyone seems to think it is, and we’re not going to remove it, thank you”, and even went so far as to get the local rabbi to say that he didn’t object to it, because it was a hindu symbol, and not a nazi symbol, but the museum continued to get complaints from people who were probably not even born when the swastika was actually used as a nazi symbol, and the museum finally caved in and removed the tapestry. when i pointed this out to a friend, he said “people are dumb”, but i think it’s more than that. philip k. dick said “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” and that’s the kind of shift in reality that i am seeing here: i “believe” that reality is one way, most of the rest of the world “believes” that reality is something completely different, and people who i would expect to not only know the difference, but who are supposedly expert in teaching dumb people how to be smart, actually go along with the “dumb” people and remove something that is decidedly not nazi, simply because these “dumb” people thought it was.
what⁈⁉
but it goes back a lot further than that. i pretty regularly find myself totally at a loss to determine why someone who was faced with an eminently apparent and logical choice to do one thing, deliberately and blatantly chose to do the exact opposite, and was cheered by society for doing so.
POINT 2) ever since i first started learning about spirituality, i’ve heard one basic message from every single bona fide spiritual teacher i’ve ever met (there are a number of scam artists who people think are spiritual teachers that don’t teach this message, and they’re not the ones i’m talking about), which is that you don’t “pretend” to to something, you don’t “try” to do something. it’s like yoda said: you either do, or do not. there is no “try”. you don’t “pretend” to be an artist, or an engineer, or a truck driver: you either are, or you’re not. in the same way, you don’t “pretend” to be enlightened: you either are, or you’re not. and (a very important point to remember) nobody can say conclusively whether a person is, or is not enlightened: they generally have to rely on what the person claims for themselves. my experience, in general, is that you don’t often get people going around saying that they’re enlightened, and in general, i would be extremely suspicious of anybody who was doing so (so don’t expect me to make a big thing out of this), but you have to start somewhere, and this as good a time as any (rabbi hillel said that).
POINT 3) for a long time (upwards of 35 years now) i have been learning a lot about spirituality and have developed what i believe to be a unique path. i’m not interested in finding other people who agree with me spiritually, much as i’m not particularly interested in what people think of me when i walk into home depot wearing a kilt, a pink long sleeve shirt, and a fez (and, believe me, there were definitely some eyes cast askance in my direction when it happened, but at the time i was totally oblivious to everything except the project that i was working on). i’m firmly convinced that the path i have discovered is exactly the right path for me, in spite of the fact that, when it comes to explaining that path, many have come to the conclusion that i am totally crazy. i don’t let opinions like that dissuade me from pursuing that path, however, and so far (again, for me) i haven’t been wrong.
POINT 4) i experienced what i can only describe as a “shaktipat” moment (specifically, तीव्रमध्यशक्तिपात tīvra-madhya-śaktipāta) while i was driving in the car this afternoon. i was thinking about the fact that my perception of “reality” appears to be so skewed and i realised that either there is something “wrong” with society, or something “wrong” with me. as i find no compelling reason to think i’m crazy, seeing as how my perceptions tend to be more “what people should do” than what they, themselves, do, i was forced to this conclusion:
i get the distinct impression that i am “enlightened”.
this was such a profound revelation to me that, in spite of the fact that, during the time when i was experiencing shaktipat, traffic in my lane (and only my lane) suddenly went from 65 miles per hour to a dead stop in two seconds, and the guy behind me layed on his horn when we didn’t move forwards quickly enough to suit him, i was really enjoying myself, turned up the radio (which was playing classical music) and laughed out loud.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
there is a famous zen saying, which goes: before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
what i take this to mean is, that it doesn’t matter whether or not you have enlightenment. you get no special powers or priveledges from being enlightened: it is a purely spiritual experience, and can only be appreciated on a spiritual level. anything having to do with my body, or my physical surroundings will not be affected by my enlightenment in the least, and very likely nobody else will notice…
but the way i perceive “reality” will be drastically altered forever.
instead of wondering why society is so screwed up, and why i’m so different, i have an entirely different view: one where it’s okay for people to do screwed up things that don’t affect me, because people are going to do screwed up things whether i am here or not. of course, i will do my part to make sure that people don’t do screwed up things, and to help people see the screwed-up-ness of what they have been doing, if they ask, but if they don’t, i won’t worry about it.
you don’t have to be a monk to be enlightened: Shyama Charan Lahiri was an enlightened householder, and one of his main messages was that anyone could become enlightened. i feel it is quite an honour to follow in the footsteps of Lahiri Mahasaya, which i have been doing for 25 years…
my impression, based on the behaviour of people i suspect to be enlightened, i would guess that i will develop ways to “trick” people into doing things that i know will be more beneficial to them than the things they were going to do, but my guess is that it will take a while and i’ll probably face abject failure more than once before i get the knack of it.
i’ll probably get frustrated and angry about injustice, but i got frustrated and angry before i was enlightened: before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. nothing has changed on the physical level.
other than that, i don’t know how being enlightened will affect me, because i have never been enlightened before. if anything interesting comes up, i’ll be sure to clue you in. 8)
another week closer to the eschaton…
i don’t use facebook for a large number of reasons. primary among these is that, despite the fact that a lot of my current friends are facebook members, there are certain people from my past that might want to get in touch with me, and i would prefer it a great deal if they did not know how to get in touch with me. not being a member of facebook is a good way to accomplish that. among the other reasons, in no particular order, are these: Facebook users ‘are insecure, narcissistic and have low self-esteem’, Understanding the latest Facebook privacy train wreck, Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook, More Reasons Why You Should Still Quit Facebook and Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook? i’m not going to rant about this, despite the fact that i could rant for quite some time about facebook, because whatever i say, people are going to do what people are going to do, and one of those things is to use facebook in spite of it’s obvious and blatant flaws.
reminder: THIS is the reason why i am no longer using LiveJournal for anything remotely blog-related. i know enough about how these things work to realise that there’s probably a lot going on that i don’t understand, and that i don’t know about, but there’s one distinct advantage to having a blog located on a server over which you have exclusive control, and that is that you don’t have perverts sysadmins stalking poking their noses in where they’re not supposed to be. if you’re looking for an alternative, i can host your domain and you can run your own version of wordpress there, and i promise i won’t comment on flocked entries. contact me for more details.
Death by iPod – this is directly related to last week’s link detailing people still falling for scams, despite the fact that they’ve been running essentially the same scams for at least ten years… society needs a collective brain upgrade. examples: Google squirrels into human brains with Scribe experiment and Russia Uses Microsoft to Suppress Dissent
Windows malware dwarfs other viral threats – “The vast majority of malware – more than 99 per cent – targets Windows PCs”. another very good reason to use linux.
50 Mind Blowing Facts About America That Our Founding Fathers Never Would Have Believed – Sheriffs want lists of patients using painkillers – for example…
Stuffed Pony Blown Up By Bomb Squad Suspicious ‘FurReal’ pony blown up near elementary school – it was a battery powered, stuffed pony, in the vicinity of an elementary school… because the clowns at clownland security didn’t have anything better to do…
‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Unconstitutional – this actually happened a few days ago, but i haven’t seen it in any of the regular news at all. the “christians” will say that it’s further evidence that they are a “persecuted minority”. meanwhile Self-Described ‘Christian Counterpart To Osama Bin Laden’ Arrested In Plot To Bomb Abortion Clinic and Self-labeled ‘Christian counterpart of Osama bin Laden’ allegedly planned clinic bombing – “christians” are the real terrorists.
What does it take to be happy? About $75,000 – money can’t buy happiness, but apparently $75k a year will get you pretty close…
New research restores psychedelics’ medical respectability – first they were used as medicine for thousands of years, then they decided that they have no medicinal value, now they’re saying that they might have medicinial value after all… i wish they’d just make up their minds and stop decieving us. sign The Vienna Declaration to advocate for evidence based drug policy and strengthen the call for policies driven by evidence. join the movement to end the failed war on drugs!
Cannabis Yoga – to help you come down from your stressful life. this is not a joke.
Noam Chomsky to become new X-Factor judge – this is a joke.
fezorocity and antique brass…
friday i played linda lee’s open mike at the gypsy trader café with hobbit, and while i was there, i met another open mike musician named marshall who had already finished off one 40-ouncer and was well into his second (he had finished the second and was well into his third by the time it was his turn at the mike) when we came in. he immediately fixed his bleary gaze on me and my tuba, came over, introduced himself, and proceded to gush over my tuba, and how he had a “miniature tuba” that was exactly like mine, which had belonged to his grandfather, which he had determined that i should want to buy, because it was exactly like my tuba, but little. i payed little attention to him, becuase he was drunk and because i always get people raving about my tuba at open mikes anyway, but i gave him my business card and thought no more about it.
it was really nice to play music with hobbit, and it made me realise even more acutely the fact that snake suspenderz has been on far too long a “break” and i’ve got to get back into playing tuba for some band, because i really miss it… and tuba isn’t much of a solo instrument unless you’re The Tuba Man…
last night i (#32) went to a fez-up with hobbit (#8) and fez-monger (#13) at the elephant and castle, an upscale “british” pub (although despite the “british” ambience and decor, there wasn’t a single brit in the entire joint) on 5th avenue that has been there for at least 20 years, but i have never been in it before last night. once again, it was great to be out with hobbit and another fez-wearer in public, and the fact that it was the fez-monger himself added honour and prestige to the whole evening, even if i was the only one who noticed it.
i’ve been playing email tag with fez-monger for a week now, and i still can’t figure out where the link to order an “order of the fez” fez is. jason assured me that it was on the order of the fez web site, and he said that he emailed me with the information, but i haven’t received email from him, and the only mention of it that i can find on the order of the fez web site says that you should contact jason at fez-o-rama, and i can’t find anywhere on the fez-o-rama web site that even mentions the “order of the fez” fez. perseverance (or, possibly, perseveration) is key when approaching things like this.
yesterday, before the fez-up, i got a call from marshall, who was still obsessed with the idea that i wanted to buy his miniature tuba. he gave me enough details about it that i was able to determine that the instrument he had was probably very simlar to this one. he said that it had “engraving” on the bell (which i later determined was actually stamped there, rather than engraved, but i can’t expect him to know the difference) that said “J.W.Pepper, Importer, Philadelphia and Chicago” and that it had a serial number #24320. i determined that it was most likely manufactured around 1910 by John Distin for J.W.Pepper – a company that is still in business. i called him back and asked him if he could send me pictures, but apparently he is not technologically savvy enough to do such a thing, so i made arrangements to meet him today, to take pictures of the horn so that i could do some more research on it.
at 2:00 this afternoon, i met with him on dearborn avenue in seattle, and what he showed me was almost exactly the same as the horn that i picked out on the web, and it looked like it was in pretty good shape, for a 100-year-old silver plated instrument. it had some problems, but none that were not almost immediately overcome-able by a person with a bit of intuition and the correct tools, so i offered him $75 for it, and came away with a pepper tenor horn that is currently in the workshop with penatrating oil soaking through 100 years of corrosion on the tuning slides.
once i get the horn playing (which shouldn’t take too long, because all it really needs is a good cleaning and lubrication, and to have the lead-pipe soldered down where it’s come loose), it’s very likely going to join my menagerie.
THE “RIGHT WAY” TO REMOVE A STUCK BRASS MOUTHPIECE
A QUICK REFRESHER FOR BRASS PLAYERS
WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER TRY TO REMOVE A STUCK MOUTHPIECE WITH PLIERS OR A PIPE WRENCH
a public service announcement brought to you by Hybrid Elephant, dba Nataraja Music Service
real musical instrument repair technicians have a nifty little device called a mouthpiece puller. it is a screw-and-leverage gadget that pulls from the center of the mouthpiece, while, at the same time, pushes on the edge of the leadpipe: a method that is 100% guaranteed to free the most stubbornly stuck mouthpiece in existence, without marring the finish of either the horn, or the mouthpiece itself.
seriously, you could actually solder the mouthpiece into the reciver, pull it loose with the mouthpiece puller, and not mar the finish of either the mouthpiece or the instrument itself. i’ve done it. 8)
the proper way to insert a brass mouthpiece to avoid getting it stuck is to place the mouthpiece, gently, into the reciever and then, without putting pressure on the mouthpiece, twist it a quarter turn. this places the mouthpiece firmly enough that you can actually hold up the horn by the mouthpiece, but it can be easily removed by twisting it the other direction, and pulling straight out. if you put your mouthpiece in this way, it will never get stuck, and you will never have this problem, but if you do, this to warn you that you should never try to remove a stuck mouthpiece with pliers or a pipe wrench.
these are examples of mouthpieces which have been removed “the wrong way”. they are scarred by wrenches or plier jaws, and ruined beyond repair. if they had been removed the right way, they would still be usable. when you try to remove a mouthpiece “the wrong way”, all you accomplish is ruining your mouthpiece, and about half the time, your entire horn is an unintended casualy: a stuck mouthpiece is notorious for being stuck so firmly that it pulls loose solder joints or twists tubing instead of being removed by pliers or a pipe wrench. instead of using the correct tool and pulling your stuck mouthpiece in under five minutes, you have completely ruined your mouthpiece and have to figure out where the money for several hundred dollars worth of repair to your leadpipe is going to come from, before you can play your horn again.
a decent quality mouthpiece can cost anywhere from $20 to $200, and a new horn can cost upwards of $2,000. getting your mouthpiece stuck is not uncommon, even if you are very careful. removing it the right way can insure that you have a mouthpiece that can still be used afterwards, and can save you a lot of money and headaches.
but i don’t believe in gravity!
i’ve subscribed to a number of anti-evolutionist blogs (for entertainment purposes only, mind you). this one, from It’s Harvest Time typifies the combination of laughable, and frightening ignorance which i frequently find so disturbing that i question my own sanity in subscribing to wingnuts like this. i originally wrote “freaks like this” but then i realised that it would be a significant put-down for freaks – like myself – and i decided that a hardware reference would be more along the lines of what the guy actually is.
Stephen Hawking’s Recent Stupidity
British Professor Stephen Hawking, one of Britain’s most noted professor [sic], was quoted recently giving his explanations on the origins of the universe. Let me give an EXACT QUOTE – “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.” FROM NOTHING! This man believes that the universe was created BY ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! I don’t [sic] who you are – that’s STUPID! Don’t laugh, though. This is a quote from the atheists’ best! This is a prominent professor of theirs [sic]! This is not one of their uneducated paupers on the streets of downtown Detroit; this is the VERY BEST THEY HAVE TO OFFER! And, rather than believing in a Creator who created the universe with nothing, for a specific purpose, they would rather believe that the massive amount of matter and order in the universe came from nothing! How pitiful!Evolution
NPR (National Public Radio) has been trying to figure out recently how humans became the dominant species. Again, instead of believing in an intelligent Being who created the world with a divine plan, they believe that over a period of BILLIONS OF YEARS, the human race evolved from primates. That is the most laughable theory I have ever heard. Evolution is philosophy, not science. It is not science because it has NEVER BEEN OBSERVED. No species has even been witnessed to evolve into another. No organism has ever been witnessed to reproduce another organism of a different species. IF IT HAS NOT BEEN OBSERVED, IT IS NOT SCIENCE. As laughable as it is, they are “making it as sure as they can.” It’s weak, but it’s the best they have.
to say that he disagrees with stephen hawking would be one thing, but to say that the man is stupid is another thing entirely, and when he offers no proof whatsoever that stephen hawking is, actually, mentally deficient in some way, it borders on libel. personally, i have a tendency to think that it’s possible that stephen hawking may have thought about these things a fair amount more than i have, and, while i don’t completely agree with him about the creation of the spiritual universe, i have a tendency to think that his theories about the creation of the physical universe are more correct than not.
i would point “rev.” bob board (who doesn’t have a wikipedia page, to give you an idea of how significant the world considers his opinions) towards something like this:
since i get the impression youtube is where he has gotten most of his current ideas about evolution. i also believe that he’s a lot more likely to watch an animated cartoon, even a poorly drawn one, than he is to read a book, no matter how simple it is…
but i doubt it would make any difference in the way he thinks…
for sale
An Introduction to Text-To-Speech Synthesis by Thierry Dutoit. like new condition, bidding starts at $75, auction is 3 days.
a message to pastor terry jones and his ilk:
all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them
i guess that means it’s okay for me to advocate burning bibles…
of course, he should be entitled to burn qur’ans; it’s his right to be stupid in this free country. it’s also right for me to organise a protest against him, which will be just as offensive to him as his is to me.
seriously, i think the proper way to protest this is to organise a mass bible burning on christmas, to protest the stupidity that brought this qur’an burning on september 11th into fruition.
No-one has the right not to be offended.
— John CleeseWhere books are burned in the end people will burn.
— Heinrich Heine
i’ll even contribute my collection of gideon bibles that i have stolen out of every single hotel room that i have ever stayed in (there’s at least a dozen)… that oughta’ get the protest rolling…
twitter!!
Twitter bug creates account hijacking peril – i’m not sure that this is exactly related to what i have been experiencing, but it does explain a lot, especially since i didn’t start experiencing a problem until after i had “disabled” my twitter account…
now to determine whether or not there is a way to prevent cross-site scripting in wordpress…
growl, grumble, gripe, complain… 😡
ETA: it is as i feared: WordPress 3.0.1 – Cross Site Scripting Issue and Twitter XSS Proof of Concept – it doesn’t work if you’re running NoScript (which i am), but there it is… i suppose now it’s just a matter of waiting until somebody comes up with a fix for it…
further growl update II
apparently either something was “stuck” in my computer that i deleted when i deleted and re-uploaded my blog yesterday, or something else is going on, because so far, the unauthorised authorisation dialogue that has been plaguing me for the past three days has now flown the coop… grr. it’s back again… 8/ it’s like it waits until i’m actually typing a post before it shows up… weird!
apparently the process of disinfecting those two files that i discovered yesterday completely re-did the way the blog “plugins” work, because when i booted up this morning, i suddenly discovered that wordpress does, in fact, keep track of things that it seems to have been forgetting for a while now. maybe the thing that is supposed to email commenters when there’s a new comment will suddenly start to work now…
also, i’m sorry to say it, hobbit, but i have miraculously discovered a bidding war over the collection of conan books which is now up to $22 and the auction still has 9 hours before it’s over…
further growl update
i’m fairly sure that the authorisation dialogue message that (still) won’t go away is somehow connected to my blog. when i shut down my computer yesterday, there was an authorisation dialogue box on my screen, but when i started up this morning it wasn’t there. so, i paid very close attention to what i started up, and the order i started things up, and kept track of the processes that were running on the computer. it didn’t show up again until i logged into my blog, at which point it showed up almost immediately.
so, i deleted all of the files except for the database and re-uploaded everything. in the process of re-uploading the files, i discovered a couple of files that were infected from last year, that i probably missed when i was cleaning up last year. 8/
of course, when everything was uploaded and the database got reconnected, the first thing that happened was that the authorisation dialogue box came back, so i’ve got a couple of other options, the first of which is rebooting my local computer, to see if there is something that is stuck in my local machine.
another week closer to the eschaton…
we’ll start out this week’s post with a public service announcement: National Chronic Illness Awareness Week is coming up 13-19 september. be nice to somebody: one in two americans has an invisible chronic illness or condition!
Predator drones patrols of southern US border start Wednesday – this is now a police state, where only the priveledged live, the starving refugee is given temporary status, and the illegal immigrant is hunted down and summarily killed ejected.
example: California Cops Taser Senior Citizen in His Own Home – couple returns home, man falls, wife calls 911, cops show up and taser man when he refuses to go with them. beware – this could happen in your home, to you.
Oil Rig Explodes Off The Louisiana coast – didn’t we already go through this once? and, by the way, we now have a BP ultimatum: Let us drill or funds will dry up – considering that it took them all of a week to make the money that they have spent on cleaning up the spill, i think that they could go a little while longer before they are completely out of money…
More War Lies – war is peace, love is hate, lies are truth… business as usual.
Stephen Hawking Breaks Atheist Rules – yep, he said there doesn’t have to be a “god” in order for everything to be here. broke the rules, indeed… Is Stephen Hawking’s New Book Science or Science Fiction – “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” — Mohandas K. Gandhi
Top Web Scams of the Decade – in other words, if you don’t know that you shouldn’t respond to random, sketchy-sounding email from someone you don’t know, you probably shouldn’t be online at all. Pew Study Claims One Fifth Of American Adults Don’t Use The Internet – i’ve got an idea: make it so that you have to have a license to use an internet-connected device, in the same way that you now have to have a license to drive a car. kill two birds with one stone…
Budget cuts bring end to Stockton narcotics unit – hey, let’s move to stockton! 8)
California pot legalization ‘could end Mexican drug war’ and Marijuana activists stage Mexico City smoke-out to protest prohibition – hint: legalisation of cannabis could go a long way towards ending the war on drugs everywhere…
The Pain-Killing Power of Marijuana – especially with people like this guy’s brother pumping out new research…
Two new scientific studies reveal hallucinogens are good for your mental health – another thing hallucinogens are good for! 8)
Ancient brew masters tapped drug secrets – another thing beer is good for! 8)
Mind-Altering Parasites – toxoplasma gondii on the loose!
bwah hah hah hah!! 8D
Vox is closing September 30, 2010 – that didn’t last long… they started vox after i left livejournal, which was a little more than two years ago…
i’m intrigued, though… they’re moving people to typepad and flickr rather than to livejournal… i wonder why…?
growl update
i went to the twitter web site and quickly determined that there wasn’t a way to connect with a tech-support drone who had any hope of giving me a cogent answer to my (primarily twitter-related) problem – one of the reasons i was so hesitant to get wrapped up in this whole thing to begin with… 8/
anyway, i went to the #kubuntu IRC channel on freenode and met up with someone who, once he had seen the picture of the dialogue box, had the idea that it might be a gnome dialogue, which is odd, considering that i am running KDE. admittedly, i do have a few gnome applications installed (synaptic, for example), but as far as i know, none of them are using the gnome-keychain application from which this seems to be a dialogue box, so he suggested that i remove it, which i did.
after logging out and logging in again, it looked as though the dialogue had vanished (a good thing), so after waiting around for half an hour or so, i quit the IRC client.
almost immediately the authorisation dialogue came back… 8/
i then began shooting down processes that looked suspicious, starting with anything even remotely gnome-related. eventually i shot down enough processes that my system became unstable, so i had to completely shut down the machine and restart.
at this point, the dialogue hasn’t come back yet. i’m not sure whether it’s because of the fact that i removed software, or whether it’s because of the fact that i hadn’t actually shut down the computer, or if it’s because both of those things happened… at this point, i’m not completely convinced that the dialogue won’t come back again.
ETA: it’s back… 8/
another thing i learned about was the existence of yet another browser, rekonq, which has some interesting quirks and probably won’t replace firefox any time soon, but it’s an interesting addition to the collection.
GROWL!
i didn’t want to, but i signed up for a twitter account, allegedly so i could “keep in contact” with the previous host provider…
no, this isn’t going to be another gripe about my host provider, although it starts out seeming that way, bear with me…
of course, it didn’t work, and i don’t have services provided by that service provider any more anyway, so i decided to cancel my twitter account. after all, i never used it, and i only signed up for it in the first place because i thought it was going to facilitate something that, in fact, it didn’t. however, i found that it’s not so easy to “cancel” your twitter account.
you can – allegedly – “deactivate” your account, which is a “permant” method of “temporarily” disabling your account (whatever that means), but your account might still be visible for up to 48 hours after it has been “deactivated” due to “network propagation” (whatever that means)…
so i decided to “deactivate” my account, since there doesn’t seem to be any way at all to cancel it outright. it was actually deceptively simple. i say it was “deceptively” simple because, although i did it this morning, and my computer has actually been shut down for most of the day, i still keep getting an “authorisation dialogue” from something i didn’t install, but which says that “twitter api” at “twitter.com” wants access to something on my computer…
REPEATEDLY 😡
i click “cancel” and it goes away, only to come back about 5 minutes later. i don’t enter anything, and click “OK” – which i would assume would produce an error message, and… it goes away, only to come back about 5 minutes later…
it’s 11:00 at night, and i don’t have time to try and figure out what’s going wrong, but you can bet that i”m going to have a stern conversation with a couple of tech-support toadies at twitter tomorrow.
network/s/ing
i am writing this from portland. to be specific, i am writing this from the back yard of my mother-in-law’s house. when i booted up my battery-powered laptop, it automatically found a network, and logged me in. it also found 3 other networks, for which i don’t have the password stored in my computer.
my impression is that i can go pretty much anywhere in pretty much any metropolitan area in this country, and be able to log on to the network with not an awful lot more than a password. this particular network’s password was (probably) supplied by my wife, who set up her mother with wireless ethernet last christmas, but it shouldn’t take any more than asking someone to be able to log in to any network. i just heard someone on the radio this morning who was saying that, inevitably, they’re going to include wireless networking, or wifi hotspots in new buildings, the same way that new buildings currently are wired with electricity, sewers and running water. i shouldn’t have to do more than ask someone to get free access to internet, in the same way that i shouldn’t have to pay someone to get water, or go to the bathroom.
and yet, that’s what google – the “don’t be evil” company – is out to make happen. it’s not bad enough that google anticipates the keywords that you type in, based on information that they have gathered from your previous searches, or that google is willing to sell that information about you to other people without your knowledge or permission, but on top of all that, they want to make you pay to get what should be equally free to everyone.
yeah, i know that you can go into a restaurant and get a fancy glass of water, but you’re also going to get quite a bit more than that in a restaurant, if what you’re starting out with is water, and when water is all you need, paying for all of that other, admittedly desirable, stuff, is starting to be more of a “luxury” item than anything else…
here’s an option: give free high speed internet to everyone, but let google and verizon build their “private, for-pay” internet and have them deliver that “private, for-pay” internet in a way similar to that in which fine food is delivered at a restaurant, and see how long it is before people realise that “private” and “for-pay” means that regardless of how raunchy, evil and nasty they want to be, someone is going to be aware of their actions.
creeping up on the past
the further back you go, the more dramatically my memory fades, but because of my injury, i have a significant gap in specific memories between about 1985 and 2003. because of the fact that i was not taking very many pictures during that period, i don’t remember much, but i recently came across a whole bunch of negatives and slides, the earliest of which were taken in the late 1970s, before i graduated from high school, and the most recent were taken when i lived in mt. vernon, which ended in about 1994.
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this is Nataraja Music Service in 1983, right after i moved back to bellingham after graduating from the tech school. |
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this is ezra, approximately 1989 or 1990, aged 6 or 7. |
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my dome… <sigh> i lived in this dome for a couple of years before i moved to mount vernon, around 1990. it was this which resulted in my being a dome fanatic to this day. |
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i took a whole bunch of pictures of a bunch of antique flutes that i worked on between 1985 and 1995. i also took pictures of one of the bent flutes that i rescued. |
i’ve put a whole bunch of pictures up, but i only linked to a few of ’em.
we’re making an emergency trip to portland tomorrow. whee…
Conan The Barbarian
FOR SALE: ELEVEN CONAN THE BARBARIAN PAPERBACKS – no reasonable offer refused. get them while they’re hot…
i know there’s got to be some classic, old-school geek who can’t resist an offer like this… i just wish it was me. 8)
confused confusion
this morning i woke up convinced that it was thursday and it took until about noon or so before i was disabused of that notion. then i sat down with my synthesizer and played around with an idea i’ve been toying with for the past couple of days and before you know it, it’s 7:30 and i’ve got most of a piece of music finished. this is the result, which is considerably lower quality than the actual file, but i wanted to get it in less than 4mb to save space. i’m not sure it’s 100% finished yet, but it’s fairly close.
another week closer to the eschaton…
Can psychedelic drugs treat depression? – gee, weren’t we discussing the very same possibility FIFTY YEARS AGO⁈⁈ before all this “war on drugs” crap took over everyones’ consciousness⁈ we’ve lost 50 years of medical technology breakthroughs because of this stupid attitude that “some drugs are bad”… 8/
Why The Wars Can’t Be Won – if you needed further explanation.
Nuclear Winter – by Fidel Castro, 24 august, 2010. also, Fidel Castro has a blog, so get out there and subscribe, comrades…
Fidel Castro claims Osama bin Laden is a US spy but that’s not what they want you to think: Corporate Media Dismisses Castro’s Bin Laden Claim As Far-Fetched Conspiracy Theory
Obama administration claims roughly 75 percent of the oil had been removed or Senior U.S. scientist rescinds previous claim that 3/4 of oil from spill is gone, says most is still there? who knows for sure any longer, the reality is, the environment is severely screwed, and will stay severely screwed for quite a number of years… 8/
Calling a truce in the war on drugs – remember when england fired the chairman of it’s "Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs" and he shot back? well, he’s at it again, and he makes just as much sense as ever. will the government listen to him this time? probably not…
The facial recognition software that will put a name to every photograph in the internet – big brother is watching! coming to a browser near you soon, whether you want him to or not… 8/
Steve Jobs Is Watching You: Apple Seeking to Patent Spyware – big brother is watching! coming to a iphone near you soon, whether you want him to or not… 8/
Mobile X-Ray Scanners Hit The Streets – big brother is watching! coming to a street near you soon, whether you want him to or not… 8/
L.A. authorities plan to use heat-beam ray in jail – but only on “unruly” residents.
Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations – if you weren’t paranoid enough already…
Every Time You Forward an Email You Donate To Al-Qaeda – now we’re going over the line into stupidity… 8/
Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims and Special Investigation – Evolution reflect the way i’ve been feeling about the general public recently, so watch out if you have to be in contact with me for any length of time, especially if you’re upset about either of these issues.
Upgrade Excreta – single malt whiskey from elderly diabetic piss, composting toilets and sparkly shit to lighten up your day…
Ye anciente obscure weirdnesse spelle
this was scanned from the last box of stuff i haven’t looked at in 5 years, and was probably packed in that box 3 to 5 years before that. it’s a relic of my time at microsoft. i don’t know where it came from before that.
PORK!
if you’re vegetarian, you should probably skip this post, because it is all about the glory of eating other sentient animals. you have been warned.
i love the web…
even when i don’t, i still, secretly, deep down in my being, love the web, and this is one of the primary reasons why.
the other day i was idly surfing around and i came across a link for Proper British Bacon, and i thought to myself, “i know where that is!” so i took the short jaunt down the hill and visited.
i actually got there early: their hours are from 12:00 to 6:00 wednesday through friday (or saturday, i don’t remember), and i got there just before 12:00, so i waited until they opened the door, and went into about as british a butcher as i imagine exists on this side of the ocean. there was the requisite rack of “Spotted Dick” and other sweets, but i only had eyes for the pork. i didn’t even check to find out whether they carried mutton or not, i figured that could wait until my inevitable next visit. i was quickly on my way with my little package of joy.
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british bacon is made from pork shoulder, and is a lot more lean. american bacon is made from pork belly, and contains significantly more fat. |
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| the cooked product is a lot of meat! |  |
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the american bacon actually took a few more minutes to cook all the way through |
| the american cooked product is definitely yummy, but it is a lot less meaty than the british bacon |  |
all in all, it was a very productive day, and you can be assured that i will be making visits to proper british bacon in the near future.
vegetarians, you can quit hiding your eyes now, it’s all over with.
host headaches
so i was forced, once again, to switch host providers.
i was having a conversation with the (now) previous host provider, who said that there was nothing to worry about, and then, two days (literally) later, i get an email from him that says he’s going out of business – again… he gave me a date of 18th septembr as the date… then, he sent me email the next day that said that the original message was sent “as a draft”, and that the actual date was 9th september.
i have gotten so tired of people jerking me around – this guy was doing okay, with the exception of saying he was going out of business a few months ago, but then changing his mind and deciding that he was going to stay in business for his existing clients – but after i got the “draft” message, i decided to be proactive and rustled up a couple of potential new host providers, and began the process of moving. whether or not he was going to change his mind, i’d simply had enough of his being able to jerk me around.
i switched the DNS numbers two days ago, and there was the requisite 48-hour chaos period while the new DNS propagated, but it appears that everything has settled down at this point.
shortly after i switched the DNS numbers, the (now) previous provider called me to see how the process was going. i get the impression that he was waiting for me to get out of his system, because now, none of his domains are available. this is a guy who is apparently a high school student who “lost his job” and can’t run his service any longer. the problem i have with that is that hosting web sites is my job, and if i don’t have a host provider, I will go out of business.
i switched to a professional host provider, not a “skript kiddie”, that has a proven, international record (no, i did NOT go back to 1&1), and i’m actually paying less than i was with the previous host provider. hopefully this will be the last time for a good long while, because i’m totally over it.
we are all equal versus i’m better than you
i was driving home this afternoon when i had a realisation: this society is screwed up, mentally, and it comes from the fact that there are two very powerful, but entirely opposite messages being propagated from a very early age. one message is that everyone is equal: things like the constitution, the bill of rights and even the pledge of allegiance emphasise the fact that nobody is better than anybody else, and that all of us are just human beings. the other message is that there are some people who are better than other people. this was driven home to me by a bumper sticker i saw on the back of the car in front of me that said “Cougar Pride” and had the name of some elementary school on it.
of course, what it said to me is that the students of whatever elementary school it was are indoctrinated to believe that their school is better than the other schools in the area. it was intended, most likely, to elicit pride in the school’s sports teams, but it clearly was intended to represent the entire “cougar” population, regardless of whether or not they were on a sports team. and it obviously doesn’t matter to anyone that the population is being indoctrinated, because i’ve seen exactly the same message on bumper stickers for every school that has thought about it in the slightest degree.
i see things like this all the time: “our sports team is better than yours”, or “our city is better than yours”, or “our religion is better than yours” — but we’re all equal, all just human beings, nobody is “better” than anybody else.
society is going to continue to be screwed up until we start teaching our children consistent messages and stop being contradictory.
another week closer to the eschaton…
Crabs provide evidence oil tainting Gulf food web – oil spill? what oil spill? wasn’t that two weeks ago? 8/
and, while we’re on the subject of oil, 2,487.5 mpg! Catchy headline unneccessary – “We find it incredibly thrilling to report mpg ratings that require a comma so we’re going to write it again: 2,487.5 mpg. Wow.” that’s right, they’re talking about two “prototype” internal combustion, gasoline powered cars, in measured competition one got 437.2 miles per gallon, and the other got 2,487.5 miles per gallon… detroit is still hyping their 20 – 25 mpg cars as “energy efficient”, “fuel saving”, and other preposterous blather, despite the fact that mileage on my cars hasn’t changed significantly in over 30 years. apparently, we “umayrakins” are swallowing it hook, line and sinker, and begging for more. it’s my understanding that you can’t sell a car in europe these days that doesn’t get at least 40 mpg… what do we have to do to get these “prototype” cars into mass production?
oh, and by the way, Senior U.S. scientist rescinds previous claim that ¾ of oil from spill is gone, says most is still there and Top Expert: Geology is “Fractured”, Relief Wells May Fail … BP is Using a “Cloak of Silence”, Refusing to Share Even Basic Data with the Government – what? were they really thinking that we would believe that they could clean up two months worth of oil spill in less than a month? and once they got the well plugged up, the first thing BP did was go back to it’s habit of not sharing information with anyone again… it all goes back to that link that i found a couple weeks ago, where the guy was claiming that the BP gulf disaster may have triggered a ‘world-killing’ event…
Time To Terminate Western Civilization Before It Terminates Us – right on! its about time somebody said it! it’s about time we all get down to learning at least Ten Reasons to Become Self-Sufficient and Ten Ways to Get There
It’s time to presume the web is guilty – it’s an interesting way to look at it, but i think he may have something there. especially considering that Trojan-ridden warning system implicated in Spanair crash – when i was a software tester, there was this thing called “good enough” which was a state where the software still had bugs, but it was “good enough” to release to the public, because the bugs that it had were small, inconsequential, difficult to show, or inconsistent enough that there wasn’t an immediate need to fix them. there were exceptions to the “good enough” rule, which included software on which peoples’ life depended, such as avionics, medical software, and that kind of thing, but when i was a software tester, the concept of a virus that spread through email was something that had only recently been realised and hadn’t been around for more than a couple of years, and most of what appeared on the web was presumed to be innocent. now we’ve gotten to the point where software testers can’t assume that “good enough” really is good enough any more, and even when it is completely bug-free, software may be vulnerable to a specifically designed attack. moral: your computer is suspect. be wary of anything it tells you, and watch your back at all times.
cardinal francis george, head of the u.s. conference of catholic bishops, has gone on record regarding proposition 8, saying no court of civil law has the authority to reach into areas of human experience that nature itself has defined. he obviously hasn’t seen this video, shot at the honolulu zoo on november 11, 2004, of a chimp raping a frog. that’s about as natural as it comes, and if nature intended for a frog to provide oral pleasure to a chimp, then two people of the same sex having the right to marry, or an individual’s choice to use cannabis shouldn’t be far off, right?
Church Vows to Burn Qur’ans Without Fire Permit – the church said they were going to burn qur’ans, but the gainsville fire department said that they can’t burn books without a fire permit (shades of Fahrenheit 451, anyone?). now the church says, permit or not, they’re going to go ahead with their “protest”, because islamic law “is totalitarian in nature,” islamic teaching contains “irrational fear and loathing of the west” and that the qur’an teaches that jeezis “was NOT the son of ‘god'”. again, i would ask, is "christianity" that much different? change “irrational fear and loathing” to the east, and remove the negative from the last statement, and i would say that the similarities are striking…
there are a couple of things from LiveScience – One Common Ancestor Behind Blue Eyes and Age Confirmed for ‘Eve,’ Mother of All Humans – that i’d be willing to bet are going to be abused massively and frequently by “christians” who will say that they just prove that “eve” exists, even though it’s only about 196,000 years older than the “young earth creationists” claim, and even though both of the articles specifically say “this doesn’t mean she was the first modern woman”… it’s just a matter of time before they latch on to this and try to twist the meaning of the words to fit their own schemes…
How Can You Control Your Dreams? – i have never seen, and probably will never see inception but lucid dreaming has always held a great deal of interest for me.
Simon’s Cat – that is all.
fresh paint
so i went to the art car show at Fresh Paint in everett yesterday. i really like doing shows like that, because i get paid for doing exactly what i like to do most, which is being creative and answering questions about my artwork. i only had one person who was obviously disturbed by what she saw as a “neo-nazi” symbol, and she was very concerned because, while initially she didn’t even see it, she was also very concerned about my eternal salvation: it didn’t matter that my religion has been around for 5 times as long as her religion has, and basically says the same thing that hers does anyway, if i would only accept that jeezis died for my sins, everything would be all right — until she also learned that there was a perceived “neo-nazi” aspect to it, whereupon she broke off the conversation in the middle of a sentence and walked away.
ignorant people like her really push my buttons… 😐
there are a few pictures – fortunately i was unable to get a picture of the ignorant woman, but that’s okay, because i didn’t like her anyway.
dreek
i bought some 1shot clear coat for the hood of my car. it works okay on the black – it does cause it to bleed this interesting brownish red colour, but i can clean that up pretty quickly. on the other hand, when i apply the clear coat to the gold ink, it smears – even totally dry ink – and it takes long enough to clean up that i won’t be able to clear coat the car, at least not before tomorrow, when i have a show in everett for which i’m being paid $100.
i’ve been playing around with a stencil design based on Śrītattvanidhi, but the stencils i have designed so far are too big for the media i have, and while i know that larger media exists, i still haven’t found a source for it. it’s coming really close to the end of the “create an art car in the open with no garage” season really quickly, and i haven’t got more than the hood finished on the car, which is a perennial source of frustration for me. hopefully the newly expanded workshop space will facilitate my attempts to make this a reality.
oy… 8/
bookstore | North Bay, ON, Canada
Customer: “Our daughter is looking for a book called Antonyms and Cinnamons.”
(I type it into our search system, but no dice.)
Me: “Would you know the author’s name?”
Customer: “No, I forget. It was something weird though. She wrote it down, but I forget.”
Me: “Might you mean Antonyms and Synonyms?”
Customer: “Yes! That’s it!”
(I search again.)
Me: “Nothing with that exact title is coming up. Was there more to it?”
Customer: “The author’s name. It was something funny. Sounded like a dinosaur. Wait, I think I might have it here.”
(She searches through her pockets and fishes out a little folded piece of paper.)
Customer: “Here it is. Antonyms and Cinnamons by Theo Saurus!’”
day of depression and diarrhea
today moe left for a weekend camping trip sheepdog trial, which involves her camping out for a few nights near camas. she took all of the dogs with her, but i felt like cold ass when she got up (at 6:00 in the morning) to leave, and due to the fact that, despite the fact that she had been telling me about this for months, i “didn’t remember” it was happening until yesterday, which meant that along with feeling like cold ass, i was in a pretty depressed state of mind, and that’s not to mention the fact that i had a headache – and i very rarely get headaches, which is kind of odd for someone that has had an AVM. so i woke up depressed, feeling like ass, with a headache and moe is leaving. i went back to sleep (a feat in and of itself, all things considered), and when i woke up the headache was mostly gone, but moe was gone too. 🙁
i have been making a list of things i need to remember recently, and i had a few things that i needed to get for the workshop, so i went out and did my list stuff. i was finishing up at home depot when my stomach did one of those growls that indicates immediate, uncontrolable pooping – which has been an on-again-off-again problem that they told me to watch out for at the hospital after my injury. they just mentioned it in passing, so i didn’t give much thought to it at the time, but every now and then i’m struck with sudden, almost explosive diarrhea for no apparent reason, and it struck as i was checking out at the home depot this afternoon. i don’t think anybody else noticed, but i was glad that it was my last stop, because i would have had to go home, take a shower and change clothes pretty much regardless. 🙁
i actually felt the depression slip away, though, once i got home (and once i got cleaned up). i did some desperately needed work in the workshop which resulted in five new shelves and a second work space, so that now i can work on two projects at once and not have to put stuff away from one project before starting on another one. i’m feeling subdued and tired, but, as i told moe, i don’t have that “nasty, kill the whole world and then commit suicide” feeling any more.
another week closer to the eschaton…
let’s start off with a bit of double-you-tee-eff, shall we? Topless sunbather accused of sensuously rubbing in sun cream – keep in mind, this happened in italy, where it is legal for women to go topless on the beach everywhere, and not just in secluded areas. apparently, however, that was okay with the mother of the teenage boys the sunbather was accused of troubling, it was when she started rubbing on the sunblock that the mother started to get upset. i wonder if anyone thought about asking the teenaged boys what they thought?
Radio, RIAA: mandatory FM radio in cell phones is the future – they’ve decided that we can’t have the music ourselves, but now they want to mandate that, in the future, all mobile devices will come equiped with an FM radio, so that other people can program our music for us… or something like that. honestly, the whole copyright system is so screwed up that i don’t pay that much attention to it any longer, except when it involves copyrights that i hold…
so i did a little bit of research into whether washington state has a water rights law that prohibits homeowners from harvesting rainwater. what i discovered is that rainwater collection is a complex issue, but homeowners are not prohibited from having a rooftop rainwater collection system, and that under certain circumstances, it is perfectly legal for property owners to have cisterns of 30,000 gallons or more. Rainwater Collection in Washington State is the place to start. i understand what the people are saying about modern folk thinking that we have to ask permission to excercise our inalienable rights, though. it’s time that changed.
Warning to Travelers About New, Drug-Resistant ‘Superbug’ – it’s the end of the world as we know it, and i feel fine…
Voogle Wireless – don’t… be… evil!
Senate Passes "The ______Act of____" – H.R. 1586 started out as one thing (TARP taxes), became another thing (an aviation bill), and is now a batch of spending policies… and it has one of the most unlikely names imaginable.
Marijuana legalization in Mexico gaining support – now all we have to do is convince our “leaders” to do the same thing… if the people lead, eventually the leaders will follow, even if it is begrudgingly.
Why hemp could save the world – this is an article by D.M. Murdock, otherwise known as acharya s, who i’ve been reading about for 20 years or so. she’s got a lot of interesting things to say, and this is one of them.
Science supports medical marijuana – this is a response to a journalist who is apparently misinformed concerning science and cannabis, but it’s good reading all on its own.
Taking God to School is an article about how we should be bringing back “Prayer, The Ten Commandments, learning about creation, readings from the Bible” in public schools. as you have probably already guessed, i think this woman is not only wrong, but crazy, and possibly dangerous, but apparently that doesn’t matter, because “God is not bound by policies and politically [sic] correctness”. that phrase catches my eye. first of all, i don’t know who they’re fooling by saying that they know what we should be doing in our public schools when they can’t even use proper grammar to form a sentence, and if they’re claiming that “god” isn’t bound by political correctness, then they are, essentially, saying that their “god” isn’t politically correct. for people who have such a hangup about conformity, it’s rather unexpected for them to acknowledge that their “god” isn’t politically correct, and it makes me wonder if even they don’t take what they say seriously…
Muslims Seek to Censor Gospel of Christ – another one from “christian” news wire that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, this one is about muslim leaders having a press conference to plead with legislators to do something about “christian” protestors demonstrating in the public forum around mosques. of course the public thoroughfare around any place of worship is fair game for protesting, but let’s put the shoe on the other foot: what if muslims were “spreading the gospel” of mohammed outside a “christian” church? the “christian” leaders would be having seven kinds of a hissy fit, and demanding that laws be drawn up immediately to prohibit such a thing (see Strippers protest church for a change), so why the furor about muslim leaders heading them off at the pass? not only that, but it’s only a press conference, nevertheless these “christians” somehow interpreted this as their “potential for violence” and say that “gentle christian saints” (HAH!) will be holding their own “press conference” outside the mosque. then, there is something that made me wonder even more about these peoples’ sanity: they say that “Islam is not a religion, nor a cult, but a total and complete 100% system of life. It has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components.” — and “christianity” isn’t? and “christianity” is somehow different from all that? and “christianity” is somehow better than that? never, in the 2000 years since jeezis, has there ever been any evidence that is the case. PERIOD. “The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.” that means ANY religion, whether it is “christian” or muslim. they shouldn’t get a special law that prohibits islam any sooner than they should get a special law that prohibits “christianity”. people who get upset about things like this are stupid to think that they’re going to get special treatment just because they happen to believe in the right things, and they’re stupid to post things like this on the web, because there are people who will, undoubtedly, work out the flaws in their logic and see how stupid they are…
Man tries to get his name legally changed to Boomer the Dog and Unicorn Being a Jerk – now there’s some craziness that i can get behind… 8)
suck update
in a dramatic about face, flickr/yahoo actually admitted that memoriasdopac.org.br was, actually, abusing their priveledges as a flickr API subscriber, and cancelled their account.
the thing that amuses me is the way they put it in the email they sent me:
We’re very sorry for the previous email we sent to you.
The site you reported is abusing Flickr resources, and we will take the appropriate action on their account and Flickr API key.
that’s all very well and good, i suppose, but wouldn’t you rather have done that in the first place, rather than giving me some bullshit answer about rotating my graphics and then rotating them back, when i very clearly said what was wrong right from the very beginning?
i suppose responses like that are among the reasons why i’m not a software tester any longer. i tell people what’s wrong, they tell me it’s not, i tell them it is and show them where, they acknowledge that i’m right, and i get snotty about it.
easy solution: LISTEN TO ME THE FIRST TIME! – which NOBODY has tried… i suppose, adding to the reasons why i’m not a software tester any longer… 😐
spam sucks, but this really sucks…
apparently Memory of the PAC is up to no good… it’s supposedly a “Program of Acceleration of the Growth (PAC) in the slums of Rio de Janeiro.” and they supposedly offer images as “the result of the first year of this documentation”…
the only problem is that they’re apparently hotlinking flickr, because i was poking around this morning and found a link to a copyright picture of me (the original is here, for reference)… i don’t know precisely how they’ve done it, but it appears as though they have copied & pasted significant portions of flickr’s code into their own web site, so that they are essentially offering photostreams from flickr as photos from rio de janeiro, and are incorrectly offering photos, including photos which are copyright to me (and, very likely, thousands of other people as well) under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Generic license.
i realise that there’s not an awful lot i can do about it, but i sent them a DMCA takedown notice (which i anticipate having exactly zero effect), and i’m currently in a failing discussion with the drones at flickr, who say they can’t do anything about it either, and recommend that i go through my entire photostream, one at a time, rotating, and then rotating back each photo, which will change the URI for the photo, which will mean that (theoretically) they won’t have them any longer, but for a service that i am paying for, that sounds like entirely too much work that i have to do to maintain a copyright on files that are served from flickr machines.
spam sucks!
on saturday, i was present when a post to freecycle south king county arrived, with an offer of a tunturi recumbent bike. naturally, i replied instantaneously, but i got no response. two days later, i replied again, but no response. two days later, i replied a third time, but again, no response.
there has been no “taken” message posted to freecycleskc, so i decided to do a bit of sleuthing, and discovered that the person who posted the message has only posted one message, started their account shortly before posting that message, is not currently online, and hasn’t been online since saturday. to me, this is an indication that the post offering the recumbent bike is a ruse to get people who will be sent spam the “chance” to respond, so that the spammer will have their email addresses, which, then, will be added to spam lists that are circulated among other spammers.
i wrote the list owner for freecycleskc, a person with the charming email handle “PrayingMommy4”, who isn’t concerned, because the person “gave very good answers when they applied for membership a few days ago”, but i’m not convinced. to me, this has all the earmarks of a spam harvester, in fact it may be an automated process… 8/
a few days ago, i got a google alert for my name, which was a link to a spammer’s discussion group, where they were discussing this “opt in” list that had my email address, and other email addresses from spamcop.net on it, and the spammers were wondering whether or not this was “really” an “opt in” list or not. the conclusion of the discussion is that it was “really” an “opt in” list, but they recommended that they “not use” the spamcop.net addresses.
by the way, it’s off topic, but are there any speakers of what i assume is turkish out there, who can tell me what this is all about?
i have NEVER signed up for any “targeted” lists with my spamcop.net address, so any list that includes my spamcop.net address is, by definition, going to be reported as spam. automated processes and clueless list owners don’t make this any easier, but i’m going to keep reporting spam until i stop getting spam.
imagine a day where 100% of ALL EMAIL TRAFFIC ON INTERNET are legitimate messages, and not a single UCE of any kind… it’s possible, you know…
friday the thirteenth comes on a friday this month…
namely, TODAY!
the hole
the past couple of days have been spent sawing and chiseling out the piece of what turned out to be ⅝" masonite around the back door, which has had considerable water damage pretty much ever since we first moved into the house, and has gotten bad enough that you could see the ground through the floor. the masonite had deteriorated to the point where it was formed sawdust being held together with hope and what remained of the watered down glue by which it had originally been held together, so i broke out what i could of it manually, and then i sawed and chiseled out the rest, made a replacement piece out of ⅝" CDX (exterior grade plywood), and put that in its place.
i took a few pictures of my progress, but i pretty much stayed on task, because having a hole in the floor right outside our bedroom door doesn’t work very well.
and, once again, this is a prime example of a job that couldn’t have been done if it weren’t for the workshop, and its contents… 8)
mac os 10 doesn’t recognise an .mpeg file? weird…
QuestionCopyright.org | A Clearinghouse For New Ideas About Copyright – it’s about time someone started taking note of the fact that the copyright system is totally screwed. the next question is whether or not they’re going to be able to do anything about it.
Bombing Iran – here’s a good idea… let’s not… 8/
American Christianity is not well, and there’s evidence to indicate that its condition is more critical than most realize – lets hope more people realise it before the rest of ’em drive us into armageddon, ‘eh?
Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter – i was a vegetarian during my “hard-core hippie” years, but i grew out of it about 20 years ago, because i realise that God is perfect. also, i figure that if i am in a situation where it’s either eat meat or perish (which is not too unlikely in these “last days”), there is more likelyhood that i will be able to survive… and that’s not to mention the taste: there’s nothing vegetable that can beat the taste of bacon… or lamb… perhaps this is the reason behind all of that rationalisation.
Mitch Miller dies – i’ve said it before, and i’ll say it again: too many cool people from my generation have been dying recently. once again (and with a great deal of futility) i say, STOP IT!
How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a ‘world-killing’ event – more debate as the world burns…
Does circumcision cause psychological damage? – if you have to ask, you’re not male…
Future Crimes Can Be Predicted Perfectly – i’d roll my eyes and say “yeah, right…” except that it’s from the 100% totally reliable FOX News…
We don’t have to get sick as we get older – yep…
Continue reading mac os 10 doesn’t recognise an .mpeg file? weird…
snurl
it’s raining, which means that instead of cutting out the part of the floor near the back door that has a hole in it, next to the back door, i’m doing this instead. i’ve been able to get some work done in the morning, but since i went to buy the replacement flooring and came home – around noon or so – it has been raining hard enough that i can’t do the important part, which is cutting out a piece of floor 4′ x 1½’, and cutting a 4′ x 1½’ piece of replacement flooring. i’m still not 100% sure of what i’ll find once i cut the hole in the floor, in spite of the fact that i’ve actually climed underneath the house. i do know that there are two joists directly below the middle of the door, but there is a cloth vapour barrier of some kind underneath the house. it’s ripped away right underneath the door, which is probably one of the reasons why the hole is right next to the door, but it is in place once the door frame ends, and the piece of flooring i have to replace goes all the way to the end of the hall. fortunately (i guess), the wood that i have to replace is very likely 30 year old rotten press-board, so instead of cutting away most of it, i can probably just break out most of it manually, so that i can see what’s down there before i cut the replacement piece.
tomorrow i’ve got a gig at the ballard locks with the ballard sedentary sousa band, so i probably won’t get the chance to work on the floor until later on tomorrow afternoon, at the earliest.
from my sketchbook
the only way we can worship anything other than God is when we worship something that is a result of some occurance outside of our bodies. we are created in the image of God and we are given life by God and God dwells within us. when we worship something that is not within oujr own bodies, we worship the creation and not the creator. when we worship something within our bodies that is a direct result of occurances outside of our bodies, we worship our creation, but not God’s creation. our creation has been called the “ego” – that part of our personality that is a direct result of society. it is that part of our personality that wants us to think that we created ourselves. it is that which is spoken of in Isaiah 47.10 “for thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: Thou hast said none seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.”
the ego is that part of our mind that “thinks” and “knows” from learning, and is ignorant of reality outside of itsself. the God that lives within us is that part of our personality and thinks and knows from intuition or inspiration. its true source is cosmic learning, the accumulated experiences of the creator, which lives in all of us at the same time. this is what is spoken of in Philippians 2.5-6 “let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” the “mind” spoken of is the mind of the cosmic creator. Jesus, himself, didn’t have a personality of “Jesus,” because he was totally the Personality of the Divine Creator – so much so that he had the abilities of the Creator as well. John 5.30 “I receive not honor from men.” if we worship Jesus, we worship the body, and not the Mind of the Creator which lives within the body. this is the meaning of the crucifixion: Jesus’ body was just a vehicle for the mind of God, which lives forever, with or without a body. as Jesus said: “Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17.21)
colour me frustrated… again…
Incoming BP CEO: Time for ‘scaleback’ in cleanup – maybe in his dreams… 😐
Swastika no longer viewed as Nazi symbol – reading just the headline, one would be inclined to think that the movement to Save the Swastika might be having some effect in enlightening people who think that (卐 ≡ nazi), but when one actually reads the article, it would seem that the Anti-Defamation League is probably more aptly named the “Anti-Swastika League” because, while they’ve admitted that the swastika isn’t just a nazi symbol, they’re still of the mistaken opinion that it’s a “more generalised symbol of hate”, which is also incorrect, as any hindu will tell you. hindus and buddhists, and, for that matter, jews, should express their outrage about this (here is the letter i wrote them, if you need some encouragement or an example): it’s racist and against the very principles they stand for, for the ADL to say that the holy symbols of another religion are a “generalised symbol of hate” without qualification!
and while i’m on the subject, i feel really sorry for the lack of intelectual development displayed in Culture Served Raw – A Universal Symbol of Hate – remember, we’re talking about TEN THOUSAND years of history as a symbol of good, compared to 90 years as a symbol of evil. not only that, but the blogger in question won’t even approve any comments that don’t agree with his preconcieved notion of how evil the swastika has been, and is completely ignoring the fact that it’s only been a relatively short time that it has been anything but a symbol of good. one thing i learned very early, is that the only way to change history is to remember it differently. it’s clear that this blogger is doing exactly that, and i feel sorry for them. Swastika, a “Universal” symbol of hate? – “I understand the aversion toward the swastika in the West but to say it is universally a symbol of hate could create more intolerance, not less.”
Researcher demonstrates ATM “jackpotting” at Black Hat Conference – a number of years ago, when i was working as a software tester, one of the projects i worked on was for Triton Systems, testing a little gadget that supposedly was able to do standard ATM functions from your desktop, with the aid of your computer. they actually gave me one of their little desktop gadgets to fool around with (unfortunately, they didn’t give me any actual money to go with it… cheapskates…), and i found a number of ways to crack their proposed software and make the gadget do all sorts of things that it wasn’t supposed to do. my understanding at the time was that they used essentially the same software for their stand-alone ATMs that they used for the desktop gadgets, and ever since then i’ve wondered whether or not it was possible to do the same things on their stand-alone ATMs. apparently it is.
Collecting rainwater now illegal in many states as Big Government claims ownership over our water – it’s illegal to collect rainwater in washington? i’ll have to look into that… and if it is, get a rain barrel or two… 8)
President Wyclef? – gawd help the haitians… they’ve already suffered enough…
A priest in eastern Europe has been accused of drowning a baby boy as he baptised him. – death by superstition? i thought that had been eliminated from our society years ago… 😐
jeez, first it’s uganda wanting to kill gays, and now a Kenyan gets 14 years for sex with donkey; blames devil – something must be wrong with that whole region of the world…
U.S. Copyright Group ‘Steal’ Competitor’s Website – another blatant case of the pot calling the kettle black…
Seattle’s Aerial Transport Lifestyle System – it’s the future… right?
and, last, but certainly not least, The Blue God of Judaism – a blog by Rabbi Robert dos Santos Teixeira, LCSW, that will examine the similarities between YHWH and Siva. maybe he’ll address my question concerning the ancient biblical patriarch worshipping a sivalingam…
i suppose it’s what i get for having a 1 inch ear piercing…
i’m wondering how these people stay in business… it’s clear to me that nobody pays attention to the actual diameter of large gauge body jewelry, in any case.
i have recently bought what i assumed was beautiful jewelry from two different locations online, and after a month of going back and forth with the first one, i got a refund for half my order, because they kept sending me ear plugs that they claimed were 1 inch, but in reality were up to ⅛" too small. the second one looks like it’s going to be a similar story, although i just received the plugs today. one of them is close enough – .995″ – that i’ll probably wear it anyway, but the other one actually said “25 mm” on it, and from what i understand, is almost half a millimeter smaller than one inch.
it was, in fact, beautiful jewelry, but it was small enough that if i wear it for more than a day, my piercing closes up enough that i can’t wear the other jewelry i have, which is the right size. particularly the black tiger eye plug that i have, that i love… one inch, and because of the fact that it’s made of stone, there’s no fudging when it comes to putting it in. if my piercing is too small, i have to taper back up to an inch, or it just doesn’t go in…
the problem that i have been seeing consistently in a large portion of the body jewelry that i have looked at over the past 6 months or so has been that the gauge is measured at the outside edge of the plug, and it should be measured in the middle. thus, a 1″ gauge ear plug will actually be larger than one inch at the outside edge, by as much as .05 inch. that way, your piercing maintains at one inch, and there is a flare that protects your jewelry from falling out unexpectedly, which is what happens to me pretty regularly when i wear jewelry that i buy online, and most jewelry that is available in retail stores.
it makes me want to hurry up and get the lathe tools that are the only thing standing in the way of my being able to make (and, more importantly, sell) ear plugs that are the right size…
weird…
when i lived in new york, probably 1971 or thereabouts, a whole bunch of my music classmates and i were transported to a theatre in downtown buffalo, new york, where we took part in an experimental music recording for some artist. i don’t remember anything about who the artist was, or what the recording was ultimately used for, but what happened is permanently etched on my mind: we were taken to the balcony, directly in front of the stage which had a whole bunch of stripped down pianos, and a bunch of what looked like large metal junk piled on it. there we were each given a small bucket full of tennis balls, and encouraged to be very quiet, and throw the tennis balls at the pianos and metal stuff. specifically, they told us that noise from the tennis balls was encouraged, but noise from our mouths was not. it was an occasion that was enjoyed thoroughly by everyone, and they collected the tennis balls and re-distributed them to us at least three times. then we all got on the school bus and went back to the school, which was in williamsville, a suburb of buffalo.
why do i bring this up, apart from the fact that it’s an interesting bit of trivia about my life?
i was poking around on wikipedia today, and i found this, which is in the first part of the article abut Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno. in the article, he was being encouraged in a project “Piano Tennis”… “after collecting pianos, they stripped and aligned them in a hall, striking them with tennis balls.” (wikipedia).
my family moved to the buffalo area in 1969. according to wikipedia, brian eno graduated from the Winchester School of Art in 1969, and he was in london in 1971 when he joined roxy music, so the probability that the artist that made the “experimental music recordings” that i took part in was not brian eno is pretty high, but i would be willing to bet that it was someone who saw eno’s performances at the winchester school, or someone that had heard about them…
anyway, i was so intrigued by the whole process that when the school i was attending had to “throw out” a piano that was “broken”, i persuaded the music teacher to let me have it, and i took it apart and wrote a piece of music for the “prepared” piano-harp in 1973, not long before we moved back to seattle.
okay, now i’m getting really fed up here…
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the jewish anti-defemation league has declared that the swastika is a generalised symbol of hate. okay, that’s all well and good, the swastika not only represents naziism and so-called “white supremacy”, but it also represents Ganesha, the Lord of Removing Obstacles, and less than 100 years ago, and for 10,000 years prior to that, the swastika was a symbol of love, peace, good luck and auspiciousness for EVERY CULTURE, AND EVERY PEOPLE ON THE PLANET INCLUDING THE HEBREW PEOPLE!
let’s put that in perspective, okay? if we use this image to represent 100 years – 
– this is how long the swastika has been a symbol of love, peace, good luck and auspiciousness:
and this is how long the swastika has been a symbol of nazi and so called “white supremacy”:
is that something that a normal person should consider reasonable: that a symbol with 10,000 years of history as a symbol of love, peace, good luck and auspiciousness should “magically” be transformed into a symbol of hate, because of less than 100 years of recent history?
the cross, originally a symbol of death, has been “magically” transformed into the symbol that represents the religion with the largest number of adherents in the world, and that took less than two thousand years. the swastika is FIVE TIMES older than that, with a history to match, and yet it has taken less than one hundred years to “magically” transform it into a symbol of hatred. no matter how hard i try, i can’t seem to figure out exactly how that works.
not only that, but according to Adherents dot com, hindus and buddhists, for whom the swastika is still a holy symbol, in spite of the nazi-obsessed west, account for 20% of the world’s population, whereas judaism accounts for less than ¼%…
something is definitely wrong here. i don’t discount the fact that the jews have had a rough time of it in the past, but when a fraction of a percent of the population can state, with authority, that the swastika is a “generalised symbol of hate” and the 20% of the population who hold the swastika as a symbol of holiness can’t do anything about it, something is definitely wrong…
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beep
the dogs are really concerned that moe hasn’t come home yet, and i’ve had to close the blinds on the front window to keep zorah, the “watcher”, from barking at EVERY THING that she even THINKS might be someone driving up the driveway, which, of course, causes magick, the “alarm”, to bark uncontrollably, which causes stanley to fly off his perch which causes lucy to try to herd stanley… so it’s been a busy time, so far. i also have to give magick medication and food twice a day because of her dental work. so far i haven’t missed, but it’s been getting later and later each day, because i don’t remember until later and later.
a couple of times in the past two weeks i have had the idea that i had to go somewhere to do something, but by the time i had finished up what i was doing enough to actually go wherever it was, i had not only forgotten where i wanted to go, but what i wanted to do once i got there. today i went out to the post office, to have a picture laminated (which they didn’t do, and actually ruined the picture in the process), to goodwill to drop off two bags of clothing and to the mobile home guys to get the dimensions for the lumber i need to buy for the floor, but i didn’t do whatever it was that was important to do while i was out, because i couldn’t remember what it was… 😐 i’d start writing stuff down, but i can never tell what’s important enough to write down, and besides, writing stuff down requires finding a pen or pencil and a single place that i can write stuff like that, that won’t get lost or misplaced. i have 3 sketchbook/notebook/”moleskine”-like things that i used to write things in all the time, but now that i’m using the computer for most of my communication and scheduling, finding a place on my desk to put the notebook and write stuff down usually takes clearing off the desk a little bit, and by that time i’ve forgotten whatever it is that i was supposed to write down.
the dangly thing that i’ve had hanging from the rear-view mirror of every vehicle that has ever been in my possession since 1984 – when i thought i had bought a school bus from a woman named Mauldiwarp Moongate-Climber (which wasn’t entirely true in reality, however that is another, long, pointless story that i’ll save for another time) – finally broke. now all i have left of the school bus (which never actually worked reliably enough to travel more than 5 miles or so before it overheated) is a small handfull of glass and wooden beads, a chipped crystal drop from a long-ago chandelier, a fish made out of abalone shell, a small bell, and a broken piece of leather strap. that and the fact that i am currently listening to It’s My Life by The Plasmatics seem somehow related…
Enter turtle here
monique flew away to atlanta this morning. she’ll be back in a week. when i returned from dropping her off at the airport, i discovered an epson media projector that wasn’t here yesterday, sitting on the kitchen counter. i hope it wasn’t supposed to go to atlanta with monique, ’cause if it was, it didn’t. of course i tried to call her, but she has her phone turned off so that the wireless signal won’t “interfere” with the airplane electronics.
the doggles are all upset and wary about the change in their circumstances this morning. they all got up at about the normal time, but instead of what usually happens on tuesday, none of them got to ride in the car, they got breakfast from me, and not from monique, and they’re all currently at home. i’m gonna guess that around 7:30 or so this evening, they’re going to start worrying and fussing about the fact that she hasn’t come home yet, and that there will be a good deal of dogs staring out the front window and barking when they think they hear someone driving up the driveway. magick just had some fairly substantial dental work done yesterday, so there’s going to be a change in her afternoons for a while (she has to take medication twice a day), and that on top of monique’s being gone are going to put her even further out on the edge than she normally is.
i made arrangements with a friend to give me a ride up to burien imports, to pick up my car, so i won’t have to ride my bike for an hour, take two busses and then ride my bike for another 45 minutes to get there. i’m hoping that it will not need further repair for a while, but i’m not gonna hold my breath, because my regular mechanic told me that a car of that age and make is notorious for needing constant, sometimes expensive repair. i still haven’t heard from the lady confirming my dropping out of the great peninsula future festival, but i got confirmation yesterday for fresh paint, in spite of the fact that this year’s car is a different car than it was last year.
ETA: i got home with ganesha the car and parked it in the sun… the rear view mirror fell off… 😐 it never ends…
snoid
i discovered second use, which is a very dangerous place for me to know about, because it is replete with various objects which, while extremely cool (and some of them are also immenantly useful) are, for the most part, totally useless to me… there are a few things that i could definitely use eventually – like the tessellated fish paving stones, which would go well in the paver-patio which will eventually be where the deck that has yet to be demolished currently is in our back yard. there are also a lot of things like doors, and windows that could, potentially, be used in our house, but don’t have a specific purpose… and there are things like an upright piano, which have no immediate purpose, but it would be extremely cool to have, and other things, like an antique foot-locker (with “authentic moth-ball smell”) that i couldn’t resist buying in spite of the fact that there was a good chance that i would have to use it to move out of our house when moe discovers that i had purchased more “stuff” to cram into our tiny house – which was ironic, since i had a hauntingly similar discussion with the guy behind the counter at second use, concerning the pros and cons of “needing more ‘stuff'” in the house. in fact, there was a heated discussion about the new “stuff” that i brought home, and the first thing that moe said was “what ‘stuff’ is leaving the house in order to make room for the new ‘stuff’ you bought?” fortunately, there is a pile of ex-clothing that i can take to the second-hand store, and a large pile of blankets and bedding that will actually go into the foot-locker, which will then get stored in the loft of the workshop, so i won’t have to be moving out (at least not any time soon), and my guess is that as long as i don’t start patronising second use unsupervised, there won’t be any major problems. i discovered second use because that’s where snake suspenderz played on sunday for a couple of hours. i love those guys, and i’m just starting to reach my stride where tuba-playing is involved. there definitely has to be more snake suspenderz gigs soon.
Ganesha the Second is ready, finally, and, hopefully, i’m going to pick it up tomorrow morning… oh, my! i just realised that tomorrow is the day that moe flies out to atlanta for a week, for her conference/test thingy, which means that i probably will have to make other arrangements to pick up the car tomorrow. grr… 8/ moe is going to atlanta to speak at a vet conference, and to take a qualification test for a veterinary behaviour technicans’ organisation, neither of which i can remember the exact names. it’s really cool for her, though, because she’s actually getting paid to speak at the conference, which means that she gets a working vacation in atlanta for free. i’ll figure out some way or another to pick up the car.
i’ve got a couple of art car things coming up. unfortunately, i won’t be able to do the Great Peninsula Future Festival, because moe will be out of town, and the festival involves getting there before 9:30 am, leaving after 6:00 pm, or whenever the festival closes, and a ban on domestic animals, which means that the doggles can’t come with. on the other hand, the fact that the car is (allegedly) in running condition again means that i can go to Fresh Paint again this year, which is definitely on the schedule, because i got a $100 stipend just for showing up last year… 🙂
child pornography and the meaning of life
They called me a child pornographer is the story of two families who went camping and took family photos which were misinterpreted as “child pornography” by untrained photo-finishing drones, resulting in a year and a half of hell for the families involved… however, in memphis a pedophile-protecting pastor is the greatest opposition to an ordinance that would have stopped the predator he is accused of protecting with his silence. it really confuses me that innocent people are regularly treated to the “guilty until proven innocent” routine, when people who we are supposed to believe have our best interests in mind are actually the people who are most adamantly against society’s attempts to protect itself.
and, along the same lines, Some Pentagon employees found with child porn still working – so if you work at the pentagon, if you are in to child pornography, it apparently doesn’t matter. it reminds me that ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.
Meaning of life – at least according to wikipedia…
dreeb
i just got an incense order for $15 from denmark. according to USPS, the charge for shipping to denmark is around $70. i’ve got it fairly clearly spelled out on the site, but nobody seems to pay attention to things like that…
except for that one person who sent me an insulting message because they found my new page about K2 and didn’t like what it said, but that’s to be expected.
i’ve got the opportunity to be a part of the Great Peninsula Future Festival with my art car, but it’s still in the shop, and i’d have to come each day before 9:30 am, and then go home every night, because moe is going to be in atlanta at a conference. i’d be getting $25 for gas, and there would very likely be other people i know there, but getting there before 9:30 would be kind of a trick. of course i get to the fremont sunday market before 9:30, but it isn’t two days in a row… and the car is still in the shop, and given that it’s being worked on by jack, there’s no guarantee that it’s going to be ready in time.
beetlemania redux
about this time last year, i discovered yet another 10-lined june beetle, and this year is apparently no different, except that this beetle has all of his annenæ, unlike the previous beetles i have found… and, once again, i wonder if they have some kind of metaphysical meaning of which i am not aware.
more scientific information about the 10-lined june beetle, but no metaphysical information…
blargh!
Rarely Seen Pictures Of The Devastating Consequences Of The BP Disaster and You Are Not Authorized to See These Pictures of the Oil Spill – i was gone for a week and the oil spill got worse… 🙁 the problem i see is that they’re still referring to this as “The BP Disaster” when, in reality, it’s a disaster that affects every being on the planet, and most directly the wildlife, which doesn’t have the option to relocate when things get too awful in their part of the world. i keep looking at the pictures of eyes of the oiled beasts and thinking that it could, just as easily, be human eyes at which i am looking…
also, there are apparently Live feeds from the Gulf of Mexico ROVs which are, at this point, showing that the oil spill has been shut off showing that their cap has sprung a leak, and even if you can’t see it, they’re planning on releasing the cap within the next 24 hours anyway. good work, BP… 😐
more of the “can’t leave well enough alone” syndrome that we’ve been suffering through, and if the gulf oil spill weren’t disaster enough, now the FDA nears approval of genetically engineered salmon – i would think that there have been enough science fiction movies produced in the past 50 years or so to put some fear into the types of people who would think of ideas like this. but, apparently, if i did so, i would be wrong. just goes to show how our rulers are stupid, stupid, STUPID!!
and, speaking of “can’t leave well enough alone”, Poachers kill last female rhino in South African park – it reminds me of that native american aphorism, which goes “Only when the last tree has died, and the last river been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught will we realise that we cannot eat money.”
GodBlock – “a web filter that blocks religious content. It is targeted at parents and schools who wish to protect their kids from the often violent, sexual, and psychologically harmful material in many holy texts, and from being indoctrinated into any religion before they are of the age to make such decisions.” okay, i realise that turn-about is fair play, but i was under the impression that any internet filtering was wrong, and that we were above all that…
speaking of GodBlock, Forget about Noah’s Ark; There Was No Worldwide Flood – if the bible-thumpers won’t listen to their own scholars regarding the “truth” of the bible, then the entire human society is screwed, and there is nothing that we, as sensible humans can do about it. 😐
Tuli Kupferberg died. i’ve said it before, and i’ll probably say it again: all of the cool people of my generation are dying. i say stop it!!
Dwile Flonking? – what. the. fuck??
‽⁜‽⁜
we had a banda gozona performance yesterday on beacon hill, not far away from where moe and i used to live. it was really frustrating, because there weren’t enough musicians to cover the important parts, which meant that they were covered alternately by the ben the clarinet player who doesn’t know how to stop playing when it’s someone else’s turn, and marc the trombone player, who thinks that any time is a good time to stick in an unplanned, unannounced trombone solo, and resolutely plays whatever he wants regardless of what the part actually says. this was further complicated by gil, the spanish-only speaking sousaphone player who wasn’t playing from music at all, and continued honking well after everyone else had decided that maybe we should give up and start over. sometimes i wonder why i continue with this group… 8/
i’ve been really tired for the past few days, so much so that i actually took about a 4 hour nap yesterday, after the performance, and still was tired enough that i slept until about 10:00 this morning. i’ve had a lot of house-maintenance stuff that i’ve had to do ever since getting back from OCF that i haven’t even started on because i’ve been so exhausted.
according to moe, who is studying these sorts of things recently, i have all the necessary characteristics to be psychotic. whee. 8/
damn… etc.
i transferred the photos from last week, from two cameras on to a USB flash disk which turned out to be corrupt, which means that i lost about half of the photos i took from last week… so instead of around 200 photos, i was only able to post around 100, which can be seen here. it turns out that even the photos that i was able to save lost some of their exif information, so they all say that they were taken last night or this morning, which isn’t true, but at least i didn’t lose the image information.
so, anyway, i went to OCF last week. we were going to leave monday, but chris decided that he didn’t want to leave the day after the 4th of july, so we left on tuesday instead. the trip down was uneventful, except for the fact that because i wasn’t driving i was able to take a few photos of things that i have seen before, but been unable to take photos of them. unfortunately, all but one of them fell afoul of the disk corruption, so i didn’t get them anyway.
morningwood odditorium was a lot further along than i anticipated: all of the “heavy construction” was done (i.e. the stage was complete and most of the rigging had been completed when we got there), but there were a couple of sailmakers, nichole and somebody else who had a very strange, russian sounding name that i don’t remember (but who was, apparently, not russian or anything like it, judging by her accent, which sounded like it came from the midwest of america), who had more or less taken over the stage, because it was “the perfect place” to do the kind of things sailmakers do, so we got to work around, and watch the sailmakers do their thing, which was actually really interesting and i learned a lot about how machine sewing works in general, which will probably do me some good the next time i have to sew something.
morningwood was blessed by two rather unusual guests thursday and friday. the first was a big brown bat, who roosted backstage left thursday afternoon. while i was taking pictures of him, he roused himself and looked at me with a bleary expression, and yawned before going back to sleep, which was intensely cute. 
then, on friday, a rainforest skink and i crossed paths backstage. here is another photo of him from a different site. i’m not sure, but it may be that skinks are not native to the northwest united states, so it’s possible that this guy escaped from captivity, but one way or the other, we crossed paths at the fair, which was cool.
BBWP FTW (as they say) at the friday night fire show. on thursday there was what was supposed to be a “dress” rehearsal that we attended, but it wasn’t a “dress” rehearsal, because only about half of the acts were actually lit (we weren’t one of them), and the acts that were lit were going first, regardless of where they appeared in the show. macque managed to sweet-talk the production manager into letting us go early, and when we were done, somebody came up to us and said that the performance was “too long” and that we would have to cut something out. we debated with them for about 10 minutes, but they were relentless in their desire to cut something from our five-minute performance. we were convinced that they didn’t understand the performance, since we hadn’t lit up anyway, so we said we would cut something and promptly forgot about it once they were gone. unfortunately, i didn’t get any pictures (and this time it was not because of disk corruption), but there were 10 acts, and, for 9 of them, the audience was respectful, and applauded at appropriate times, but when BBWP came out and chris started with “GENTLEMEN, BEND OVER!” there was an immediate response while the glamazons were lighting our dongy-things, and the laughter and applause just escalated, repeatedly, from there: with the “reveal”, again when we lit our boobs and again when we started swinging our “tassels”. i really wonder what the person who had said that we had to cut our act thought of the performance that stole the show, but after thursday night, i never actually saw her again. one of my buckets fell apart during the performance, but nobody noticed, and i was able to limp off stage without breaking something important. the lady from B. Coole Designs watched us rehearsing before the show and said that she could make team patches for us, which is probably going to happen.
the fact that the oregon country fair is very similar to a mall in a lot of ways was driven home to me by a card saying “BUY MORE STUFF” that was given to me by sasha and stuart, who had gotten it from a stilt-clown with a sign that said “HURRY”. it made me think a lot about why i was there, despite the aura of “Psycho-Spiritual Rejuvanation For All” that overshadows the fair. it also gave me an idea for making buttons and stickers that say, alternately “BE AWARE” and “BEWARE”, which i’m probably going to do.
while i was on my way up to the ritz saturday night i ran into Anne Feeney, whose album with Chris Chandler called Live from The Wholly Stolen Empire is one of my all-time favourites. she was looking for a trombone player and zeroed in on the fact that i was carrying a trombone case. she invited me to play with her at the midnight show on the main stage. i decided that, much as i really appreciated the offer, that i didn’t want to do it, because she wasn’t actually scheduled to go on until 2:30, which would have meant standing around backstage in a mosquito-infested swamp (which is what the OCF mainstage is, even under the best of circumstances) for a couple of hours, waiting to go on and play one song, which i didn’t know, and probably wouldn’t get an actual part for at all… but to be given the invitation to be in the midnight show by anne feeney, just by itself, is one of the reasons i’ll be back next year, in spite of the general attitude of “BUY MORE STUFF”.
i was very careful and conscientious, and made liberal use of DEET, and actually didn’t get any mosquito bites at all…
… until sunday night, when i was packing up my tarp, which i thought was going to take much less time and be an easier job than it turned out to be. still, i came home with only about seven bites, and because of the fact that i had taken a sauna sunday night, after getting the bites, they didn’t itch at all.
next year i’ve got to get Snake Suspenderz to the fair. i don’t know what’s happening with the phil, although i’m pretty sure that whatever happens, they’re going to be the musical accompaniment for the fremont players, but at the same time, i think Snake Suspenderz would be a good way to go in general.
return from OCF
i have returned, but i’ve got a lot of stuff to catch up on: unpacking, dealing with 450 email messages (most of which are spam or freecycle offers that are from last week), laundry, i’ve got to find out about the wanna-be art-car, i’ve got about 200 pictures to sort out, and i’ve got to get started on fixing the holes in the floor (which i said i would do a couple of months ago).
ocf was definitely fun: i got my picture in the peach pit, BBWP stole the fire show friday night, we played at the ritz saturday night, and i actually got to take six saunas over the course of the four days that it was open, and i only had to pay for four of them, but being gone for a week sort of screwed things up and now i’ve got to take care of straightening them out, because apparently nobody else is gonna do it…
oh, and i’m fifty now… happy birthday to me, or something like that. 😐
OCF
i was pretty sick last night, woke up at 3:00 in the morning with diarrhea and sweating like it was hotter than it really was. took a shower and went back to a slimy, sweaty bed and woke up at 6:00 feeling a whole lot better. i’ll probably do okay at OCF, because the “party” doesn’t officially start until friday, and i’m going down today, so i’ve got a few days to recover.
see you on the flip side! 8)
by the way…
one of my articles was published on American Dream Or Bust a while ago, and i just got around to checking it out.
some doofus named bill commented in such a way as to make him look like a complete, raving loony, or a “christian” racist, or, possibly, a combination of the two. i tore him a new asshole (scroll down past the database error messages to read the comments).
i find it really disturbing that people like bill are in control of what happens in the world – not bill specifically, of course, but people like him. we are never going to change the fucked-up situation the world is in until people like bill are marginalised to the point where nobody pays attention to them any longer.
if i don’t come back from OCF, this is why
How much oil has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico – according to the estimates that have been made public. the faint-hearted should not click for more information.
Immorality is Worse than BP Oil Spill – it’s an interesting way to put it, but knowing that the author is a “christian” makes me realise that even saying “no, it’s not” wouldn’t make any difference, and they would just go on believing blatantly wrong things in spite of clear evidence, so i’ll just put their link here so that everybody else can see what stupid, stupid, STUPID people we have become…
TSA To Block Websites With “Controversial Opinions” – the move to shut down free speech on the internet accelerates… at this point there’s not an awful lot standing in the way of How to Access the Internet (A Guide from 2025) becoming a reality… 😐
County coroners can’t back Brewer beheadings claim – the governor that implimented the “papers please” illegal immigration law in arizona, blatantly lies about people being beheaded in the desert, in a bid to get re-elected. fortunately there are people out there who know how to check facts, and they’ve blown this wide open.
Subway To Start Tessellating Cheese July 1? – you may not read about the previous items on the standard online news sources, but i followed a link from yahoo to get this one. our planet is simultaneously being soaked in crude oil and suffering the rule of idiots, but i’ll be damned if they’re going to get away with selling me a sandwich that has uneven cheese distribution… 🙁
a few days ago marist published a poll which asked people if they knew what country from which the united states declared independence. of adults aged 30 to 44, 15% weren’t sure, and 10% said a country other than “England” or “Great Britain”. of all adult U.S. residents 20% were “unsure”, and 6% said a country other than “England” or “Great Britain”. here are the poll results:
  | USA Residents | |||
| On July 4th we celebrate Independence Day. From which country did the United States win its independence? | ||||
| Great Britain | Unsure | Other countries mentioned | ||
| Row % | Row % | Row % | ||
| USA Residents | 74% | 20% | 6% | |
| Region | Northeast | 84% | 10% | 6% |
| Midwest | 74% | 21% | 5% | |
| South | 68% | 26% | 6% | |
| West | 75% | 18% | 7% | |
| Household Income | Less than $50,000 | 63% | 30% | 7% |
| $50,000 or more | 86% | 9% | 5% | |
| Race | White | 82% | 13% | 5% |
| Non-white | 56% | 35% | 9% | |
| Age | 18 to 29 | 60% | 33% | 7% |
| 30 to 44 | 75% | 15% | 10% | |
| 45 to 59 | 79% | 17% | 4% | |
| 60 or older | 76% | 19% | 4% | |
| Age | Under 45 | 67% | 24% | 9% |
| 45 or older | 78% | 18% | 4% | |
| Gender | Men | 81% | 12% | 7% |
| Women | 67% | 28% | 5% | |
| July 2010 Marist Poll National Residents "N=1004 MOE +/- 3%" Totals may not add to 100 due to rounding. | ||||
things you learn from r. crumb…
so i recently broke down and purchased R. Crumb’s monumental project, The Book of Genesis, and i was flipping through it appreciating the elaborate artwork, when i came across this:
this is an illustration of a story i had located many years ago, and then promply forgot, but this is actually a better way of looking at it, and illustrates my point even better than i could have previously.
namely, what is this ancient biblical patriarch doing worshipping a shiva lingam?!?
i’ve wondered about this for a long time, and now that i have an actual illustration of it, it will be easier to ask unsuspecting “christians” why this founder of “christianity” felt it was okay to worship the way those “godless heathens” do…
“There comes a time in life when you walk away from all the pointless drama and people who create it, and surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard that you forget the bad and focus on the good. Life is too short to be anything but happy.” ….. Repost if you agree.
[swiped from xydexx who swiped it from somewhere else]
spoons, etc.
yesterday i got up at an ungodly hour (6:30 am) and went to pick up my wanna-be-art-car from one repair shop, and drove it 15 miles to another repair shop where they’re allegedly going to fix it. on the 15 mile drive from one repair shop to the other, the car almost overheated, and smoke was coming out the fresh air vents when i arrived, but ganesha is in charge of this car, so if it’s going to be fixed, then it’s going to be fixed, and if it isn’t, there’s nothing i can do about it.
anyway, that left me in burien with no car. i had my bicycle, though it’s around 30 miles home from there, so i rode to the burien transit center and took a bus from there to international boulevard, where i transferred to another bus that was going to the federal way transit center, and from there i rode my bicycle the remaining 8 miles home.
when i got home, i turned around and went out again, to get an ink cartridge for my printer, so that everything won’t print green any longer, and i also went to the copy shop to get photocopies of the panto music of which i need multiple copies. then i came home again…
when i got home, i used the new ink cartridge to print an invoice, and packaged an order that came in the day before, and went out again to the post office to ship the order.
then i came home again, and searched for, and found a guy who would fix the free lawnmower that i got on freecycle the other day. he picked it up(!) last night.
today, i went to the bank to get cash for the guy who fixed the lawn mower, and when he delivered it(!), i mowed the lawn, taking a break in the middle to go out and buy a gas can and gas, because it ran out of gas and i didn’t have any because my previous lawn mower was electric.
then i got most of the rest of my gear ready for OCF. i still have to pack clothes, and there are probably some miscellaneous things that i haven’t remembered to pack.
i keep finding myself amazed at the fact that in a little more than a week there are going to be feral hippie children immitating the play that i only saw for the first time on monday, and that was an incomplete show, because all of the music isn’t written yet, and we’re still putting the final touches on the script… the final dress rehearsal for the panto here is tonight. i believe the people who aren’t going down early are having another rehearsal on monday, but the next complete rehearsal we’ve got scheduled for the panto is at OCF, a week from tomorrow evening before the fair opens on friday. i’ve still got to determine whether or not i’m bringing my saw. also i’ve got a pink bandana and a trumpet that i have to remember to take for katy.
tomorrow there’s supposed to be a banda gozona rehearsal, but it’s for a performance that i have to miss because of OCF, so i’m not sure whether or not i’m going to it. friday there’s the final BBWP rehearsal before the fire show the night of the fair opening.
as long as we hold it together, the panto this year has the potential for being the best show we’ve ever done. we’re doing a mash up of Red Riding Hood and The Three Pigs: they’re both fairly simple, short stories that have some similar characters – the big bad wolf, and the woodcutter, for example – and they’re both ripe for tweaking the plots a little bit (or a lot) so that they’ll fit together. of course we’ve got the standard gender bending and off-colour jokes which should go over the heads of the smaller members of the audience. if we don’t hold it together, well, it’s OCF, so the probability is very high that nobody will notice, or if they do, they’ll think we planned it that way.
ښالاماندر
Humans will be extinct in 100 years – a wonderful way to start out the post, but i’d tend to treat anything said by the guy who helped wipe out smallpox with a great deal of respect. you can argue about it all you like, but this is a guy who knows what it’s like to become extinct, and if he says humans are on the way there, i’d tend to believe him.
Scientists discover riding a bike is incredibly hard – in spite of the fact that the formula they came up with sounds pretty interesting (inertial forces + gyroscopic forces + the effects of gravity and centrifugal forces = the leaning of the body and the torque applied to the handlebars), given all the things that are going wrong with the world currently, there have got to be better things for “scientists” to be working on, don’t you think?
6-Year-Old Northeast Ohio Girl on ‘No Fly’ List – more idiocy on the part of home clownland security. all their antics sure make me feel a whole lot safer… 8/
and, speaking of feeling safer, Police tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she couldn’t breathe – wow… just… wow.
no further comment necessary… 😐
Apple collecting, sharing iPhone users’ precise locations
Apple now collecting, sharing precise location of iPhone users – yet another reason why i’m no longer a mac fanatic… i’ll use a mac, but i’m NOT getting an iphone, and i’m probably not going to get a smart phone at all… 8/
Opt Out of Behavioral Advertising – Opting out of a network does not mean you will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the network from which you opted out will no longer deliver ads tailored to your Web preferences and usage patterns… but it’s a start, and if you’re as paranoid about network privacy as i am, you’ll understand the necessity for such a thing.
about every two weeks or so i get a call from a person who is looking for an “incense” called “K2”, or “Spice” – Toxicologist Warning to Parents: Look for Signs of K2 – ‘Fake Marijuana’ and After Indianola teen’s suicide, Iowa officials set sights on banning K2 – i find it really sad that people have apparently resorted to poisoning themselves, because it’s the only legal alternative, rather than getting legitimately high from something that is illegal, but has never killed anyone. from The 420 Times, “If you’re a kid and you’re thinking of trying K2 because it’s still legal to buy in your state, you’d be better off running the risk of buying real, illegal marijuana. Even if you get caught, you won’t die from inhaling a toxic substance or experience “hallucinations, severe agitation, elevated heart rate and blood pressure, vomiting and, in some cases, tremors and seizures,” like you do from K2. You’ll just be another statistic in The War on Drugs.”
Enter title here
i upgraded to wordpress 3.0. whoopie. at this point, wordpress is stable enough that you don’t see anything from the outside, and apart from a few telling colour changes, nothing is really that obvious from the back end either. i suppose once i try to do something that isn’t part of the plan we’ll see whether or not they’ve actually done a good job this version.
evan, moe’s boss and the guy who gave me the current version of Ganesha The Car, has said that something regarding the car will get worked out, eventually. meanwhile, i have an incomplete art car that won’t run sitting at a transmission shop 20 miles from where i live, which is closed saturday and sunday, so i won’t even have the chance to deal with it until at least tomorrow. once again, i thank Ganesha for the jeep, which means that i’ve been able to get to rehearsals and performances, like the performance i had at st. mary’s church in the central district this morning, or the rehearsal i have in the university district this evening, without too much difficulty (although the jeep does get fairly awful gas mileage and it still stalls at stop lights occasionally).
OCF in a week. i’m going down with chris this year, because i don’t have a working car, and he wants to get there monday, which is the earliest i have ever arrived at country fair… not that i’m complaining or anything, although it will mean that i’ll have a three or four day head start on mosquito bites when everybody else gets there. BBWP is on the schedule for the friday night fire show.
Country Is Dumb
by Pliny Keep
by Pliny Keep
Well, I’m proud to be a yuppie from Kentucky
Where we pretend we’re farming in the mall
And cowboys ride in cars
And waste their lives in bars
And our music’s still the biggest joke of all
Country is dumb, country is dumb
You only got three chords to work with, number one
And the songs all ramble on about
Women and chicken and trucks and guns
Well all I’ve got to say is country is dumb!
Well they brag about hospitality here in Nashville
They give the spotlight to the common man
But out in that sea of faces
I see no other races
And I hope there ain’t no homos in my band
‘Cause country is sexist and racist and country is dumb
You only got three chords to work with, number one
And the songs all ramble on about
Women and chicken and trucks and guns
Well all I’ve got to say is country is dumb!
(solo yodeling)
Now country is number one across the nation
People say it brings them closer to their roots
Like ignorance and hate
And a submissive mate
That fits as cozy as a pair of cowboy boots
Country is dumb, country is dumb
You only got three chords to work with, number one
And the songs all ramble on about
Women and chicken and trucks and guns
And busted hearts and trailer parks
And calloused hands and one night stands
And faithful dogs and white male Gods
And all I’ve got to say is country is dumb!
COUNTRY IS DUMB!
blah!
i just spent $1,800 on a new transmission for Ganesha The Car. the transmission now works like a dream, but the engine smells funny, it’s running really hot and i have to put coolant in it about once a week, so i took it to have it evaluated to see what’s wrong with it now that the transmission is all fixed…
the heater core is dead. worst case scenario is that it will cost $1,200 to fix.
for a free car, this is certainly costing me a hell of a lot of money… 😛
okay, i’m here…
i am totally exhausted from SACBO and surrounding festivities, and i’ve been pretty depressed most of the day (the morning after blues?), but i’m slowly coming around. it rained pretty much all day sunday, and there was at least a bracing dampness to the air all day saturday when it wasn’t actually raining. fortunately it cleared up for the actual parade, because i was very clear about the fact that if it was raining, all of my expensive electronic music production gear was going to stay in its respective boxes, which would have definitely put a cramp on our part of the parade. i didn’t vend sunday, but lack of motivation was only part of the reason. now that i’m fairly confident that the transmission on ganesha the car version two is going to last at least a year (because that’s how long the warranty on the new transmission that i bought for it lasts), i can turn my attention to the leak in the pressurised engine coolant system which causes the car to run really hot when it’s not on the freeway, smell funny, and requires engine coolant about every 4 days to a week. it’s annoying that i’ve had to put so much money into this free car to get it working reliably. about the most fun i had at SACBO was watching the doughnut jousting that evolved over the course of sunday afternoon. the crowds were really light because of the rain, but we were determined to make the best of it, which resulted in a couple of microphone stands and some coat hangers becoming targets on which were placed yesterday’s doughnuts, which were the target of jousters on bicycles, unicycles, wheelchairs, and pretty much anything else, armed with pool cues. i spent time with people that i only see once a year (mostly), was part of the centrepiece of the whole parade, and i was inducted into a secret society, the less said about which the better. fremont phil rehearsal tonight, BSSB rehearsal tomorrow, players rehearsal wednesday, LBG rehearsal thursday, BBWP rehearsal friday…
moe was at a sheepdog trial all weekend, and she won! she got a 92, and the person who came in second (who is also moe’s mentor and friend diane) got an 88. i’ll let her tell the story, but we’re all pretty proud of moe and her doggie. 🙂 also, today is our 12th wedding anniversary.
☹
What The Hex? is a game where you guess the colour based on the hex-triplet for the RGB value.
Oregon officially recognizes marijuana for medical value – "The Oregon Board of Pharmacy voted to change marijuana from what’s known as a ‘Schedule I controlled substance’ to a ‘Schedule II.’" only 49 more state governments and 1 federal government to go… 😐
Titan’s atmosphere oddity consistent with methane-based life
also
‘Grow-your-own’ organs hope after scientists produce liver in lab from stem cells – more evidence (if you needed any) that the “christians” are wrong, wrong, wrong!!
Whale Poop Cleans the Environment – The Sea Shepherds are probably already figuring out ways to use this against the japanese, politically and as a potential projectile. it also makes me wonder about how whale poop would do cleaning up the gulf oil spill…
Visualizing the BP Oil Spill Disaster – it couldn’t possibly make it any worse…
SACBO tomorrow
tomorrow’s schedule: 7:00 leave for SACBO, 8:00 arrive at SACBO and check in, 9:00 be at the parade start and help get things put together, ≈12:00 pm – 2:00 pm play in the Fremont Solstice Parade, after the parade is over until ≈8:00 pm participate in SACBO, drive home and do it again tomorrow, only with “play in the solstice parade” replaced by either vending at SACBO or not (i still haven’t decided).
how paddy the dog scared me out of my mind
paddy and zorah were snuffling around under the parrot tree yesterday about 8:00 pm, and i turned around and told them to leave it, whereupon paddy backed up, and did something to her left hind leg… who knows what it was that she did, but the results were immediately evident: she started yelping and crying, and peed all over herself, and trying to run around, but not being able to because her left hind leg wouldn’t work.
of course, i tried to call monique immediately, but what with having to deal with a thrashing, peeing, hysterical dog, and the fact that all this came up so suddenly that it took me totally off guard, i was having difficulty finding moe’s phone number in my cell phone. when i finally got her number, she wasn’t answering. i left her a frantic, probably incomprehensible message and immediately (well, as immediately as was possible, considering how freaked out i was) tried the second “animal emergency” number i have, micah. he said that he was just texting moe a few minutes ago, and said that he would try to get in touch with her. next, i called the restaurant where she was eating dinner with a friend, but their phone was unattended, probably because they were busy…
all this time i have been dealing with this frantic, crying dog who is trying to get away from her left hind leg because it’s causing her so much pain. as you can imagine, it was affecting me as well.
i called the third “animal emergency” number, evan, moe’s “boss” (although, if the truth were really out there, moe’s the one who runs the show: if it weren’t for her, moe’s “boss” wouldn’t have a clue how the business runs), and he was home. i described, as best i could what with paddy screaming, what was happening, and he told me that he would meet me at the clinic. i grabbed some blankets to put in the car, which meant that i had to leave paddy for a moment, and when i came back, she was nowhere to be found! i called her, but she was not in the living room. i couldn’t imagine how she managed to walk at all, but i eventually found her in the bedroom closet. i put zorah and stanley in their kennels and carried paddy down to the car and then monique called.
i brought her up to speed and simultaneously realised that i had locked myself out of the house 😯 in my rush to get help, so i actually had to break into the house to get my keys before i could go anywhere.
when i did, of course, that means a 30 to 45 minute trip to the clinic, but at that point i was operating on autopilot. i did notice that the “Check Engine Coolant” light was lit on the dashboard, but it didn’t matter as much as getting help for my doggie.
when i got to the clinic, moe was already there with another technician, and i left them to examine her while i went and had the heart attack that i had postponed while the emergency was in progress.
according to moe, she thinks that paddy somehow dislocated her hip, because she said that when she was examining her, she poked her thumb way down into the space where there was supposed to be the head of her femur, and then the joint reduced with a clank… i took moe’s car to get gas and when i came back, evan had showed up, and paddy was walking more-or-less normally by 10:30 or so, but it’s obvious that she’s feeling less than normal. we’re supposed to carry her up and down stairs, and she’s not allowed to jump up on the couch or the bed for a while (months? weeks? moe knows).
i want to do something with this…
some time ago i collected this information, with the intent of doing something creative with it eventually. so far (10 years or so) it hasn’t happened, so for now, here it is. maybe this will motivate me to do something with it sooner than i would otherwise.
| C | # | D | # | E | F | # | G | # | A | # | B | |
| 0 | 16.35 | 17.32 | 18.35 | 19.45 | 20.60 | 21.83 | 23.13 | 24.50 | 25.96 | 27.50 | 29.14 | 30.87 |
| 1 | 32.70 | 34.65 | 36.71 | 38.89 | 41.20 | 43.65 | 46.25 | 48.99 | 51.91 | 55.0 | 58.27 | 61.38 |
| 2 | 65.41 | 69.30 | 73.42 | 77.78 | 82.41 | 87.31 | 92.50 | 97.99 | 103.83 | 110.0 | 116.54 | 123.47 |
| 3 | 130.81 | 138.59 | 146.83 | 155.56 | 164.81 | 174.61 | 185.0 | 196.0 | 207.65 | 220.0 | 233.08 | 246.94 |
| 4 | 261.63 | 277.18 | 293.66 | 311.13 | 329.63 | 349.23 | 369.99 | 392.0 | 415.30 | 440.0 | 466.16 | 493.88 |
| 5 | 523.25 | 554.37 | 589.33 | 622.25 | 659.26 | 698.46 | 739.99 | 783.99 | 830.61 | 880.0 | 932.33 | 987.77 |
| 6 | 1046.5 | 1108.7 | 1174.7 | 1244.5 | 1318.5 | 1396.6 | 1480.0 | 1568.0 | 1661.2 | 1760.0 | 1864.7 | 1975.5 |
| 7 | 2093.0 | 2217.5 | 2349.3 | 2489.0 | 2637.0 | 2793.8 | 2960.0 | 3136.0 | 3322.4 | 3520.0 | 3729.3 | 3951.1 |
| 8 | 4186.0 | 4434.9 | 4698.6 | 4978.0 | 5274.0 | 5587.7 | 5919.9 | 6271.9 | 6644.9 | 7040.0 | 7458.6 | 7902.1 |
it’s definitely rehearsal season…
last week, monday i had a fremont phil rehearsal, tuesday i had a sousa band rehearsal, wednesday i had a players rehearsal, thursday i had a banda gozona rehearsal, friday i had a BBWP rehersal, saturday was the banda gozona performance at the seattle version of guelaguetza, and today i had a rehearsal of the beatles-simulacra-band for the solstice parade coming up on saturday. this week, monday i have a fremont phil rehearsal, wednesday i have a players rehearsal, thursday i have my choice of a banda gozona rehearsal (which i am going to miss, because it is in preparation for a performance at the solstice parade in which i am going to be otherwise engaged) or a beatles-simulacra rehearsal, friday i have a BBWP rehearsal, saturday i have the solstice parade, plus SACBO, sunday i have SACBO and a number of options, including vending… and then in a week, monday i’ve got a fremont phil rehearsal, tuesday i have a sousa band rehearsal, wednesday i have a players rehearsal, thursday i have a banda gozona rehearsal, friday i have a BBWP rehearsal, and it continues from there until OCF.
i’m going to OCF with chris this year, and chris wants to get there on monday, which is earlier than i have ever arrived at OCF before. which means that i’m going to have to be extra prepared this year (i.e. no “making a run to town to get things i forgot” this year). we’ve already been scheduled for a BBWP performance at the friday night fire show – which we didn’t do at all last year, and there was such a furor because we weren’t there that they demanded to have us back 🙂 – so i’ve definitely got my work cut out for me, learning the new rap, practicing my poi and my tassel-twirling and the fire-avoidance thing to think about. plus i’ve got to do some homework and come up with sound effects for the beatles thing. we’re going to be in a “Yellow Submarine” float, and they want some appropriate submarine noises, along with the actual keyboard stuff that i signed up for.
沰⅘ – ⅂ℐℵΚℨ & stuff
Microsoft hides mystery Firefox extension in toolbar update
also
Cyber War: Microsoft a weak link in national security – this is why i don’t use windoesn’t: I should be the one to decide whether or not to install software on MY computer, regardless of how “important” or “necessary for correct functioning” it is. the fact that microsoft thinks it can get away with installing something that i don’t know about, on MY computer is insulting to my intelligence and very definitely goes to show how evil this company really is. i would expect nothing less from a virus, and microsoft is – supposedly – better than that. 😡 and, the fact is, originally, microsoft didn’t intend for its software to be used on “critical networks” and was (and to a great extent, still is) only in the software business for the money, not caring to ensure that their software actually works the way it is supposed to. this was driven home to me a few years ago, when i was working as a “vendor” at microsoft (i had access to microsoft facilities to work on microsoft projects, but i was actually working for another company, so my microsoft-issued ID card had “V-” in front of it), testing windows XP. not a single bug that i logged (and there were a lot of ’em) got fixed during the 9 months that i worked there. needless to say, most of them are still out there on your windows XP computer, and will never get fixed – because microsft “isn’t supporting” windows XP any longer. 😡
and, speaking of evil companies, the latest word is that BP buys Google ads for search term “oil spill” – so that it can attempt to “direct internet users to its website as it attempts to control…” flack from detractors, who are just about everybody these days. they should listen to Buzz Aldrin’s Answer To The Gulf Oil Spill…
i’ve had people tell me that i should really have a more positive attitude. i say Does a positive attitude make you more motivated to learn from your mistakes? and i find, like the researchers (at the Journal of Organizational Behavior) did, that a negative attitude is more conducive to learning from your mistakes. so i’ll keep seeing the dark cloud, and leave the silver lining to others.
and, from there, directly into the random, things-that-make-you-say-WTF category…
Quantum Jumping? – “Quantum Jumping is the process of ‘jumping’ into parallel dimensions, and gaining skills, knowledge, wisdom and inspiration from alternate versions of yourself.” what… the… fuck?!? he seems to be about as random as gene ray, but somewhat more commercially oriented.
Prefixes & Words Based On Latin Number Names – now you know what it means to say “for the duoquadragesimary time, learn these things!” 🙂
Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities of giraffes by way of computational analysis – the latest, up to the minute research on the problem of whether giraffes can or cannot swim. according to this research, apparently they can. what do you know…
finally, Chinese internet addicts stage mutiny at boot camp – you WILL NOT survive an attempt to control geeks in need of internet.
APARAJITA! 8)
so my package arrived, and it contains what appears to be the correct stuff, so my anxiety has been pretty much erased…
however, my inquisitiveness is piqued, because the packaging is slightly different from what i would have expected, and it contains some elements that are what i thought to be indications that it was not the “right stuff” after all.
a number of years ago, when i first started searching for aparajita (example B), i came across example A, which was definitely not the right incense: it was a different colour, and smelled distinctly different, both when it was and was not burning. also, example A was one inch shorter than the authentic example B. i distinguished this by saying that it was “Cauvery imitation aparajita” and that was recognised by several of my incense-geek friends as being one of the characteristic differences between the authentic “Tabla Brand” aparajita and any fakes that were floating around.
it was interesting, too, because i found that same, or similar “cauvery” incense in a number of places, and not always with that packaging. it was always more or less the same incense, but it was presented to the public in a variety of ways, including the imitation aparajita package.
the last time i was able to buy “authentic” aparajita incense, it was in the package example C, which was significantly different from example B, but was essentially the same incense, in that it was the same colour and odor as example B.
but i was initially very suspicious when i opened my package and discovered the “Cauvery” logo on the packages inside, example D. however, they are the same colour and odor, both when they are and are not burning, as example B.
of course, because of the fact that they’re manufactured in india, i will probably never know for sure what’s going on with the packaging, and whether or not “Cauvery” is making “authentic” aparajita. but at this point, i’m very happy with the outcome. 😀
it’s 11:00 am and i’m anxious…
supposedly, my 40 pound package from india arrives today. i’m anxious because i don’t know whether or not it’s actually going to be the product that i ordered: the guy sent me a picture of an incense box, but there’s no telling whether or not he actually put boxes that look like that, containing incense that matches the box, in the package that he sent me… which is going to be a real bummer if it turns out that he didn’t, because i have no way to get my money back if the product isn’t what i wanted. i’m also anxious because if it is the product that i wanted, i’m not only going to be able to make a fair amount of money from it almost immediately (i pre-sold half of the orde to a company in chicago) and, if nothing else, i will have a guaranteed supply of this incense for my own, personal, enjoyment for the rest of my life… and i’ll be one of only two companies in the united states (the other one being the company to which i sold the other half of the order) that carries this incense online.
aum ganganapataye namah
ETA: 1:45 pm, it arrived, and it’s the right stuff. more soon.
bug – and not a true bug, either.
possibly a female Libellula Plathemis lydia (Common Whitetail Skimmer), or Libellula pulchella (Twelve-spotted Skimmer), but i’m not sure…
ETA 100611: according to an entomologist who specialises in odonata, it’s actually a Libellula pulchella (twelve-spotted skimmer). here is another photo of pulchella, which doesn’t have the white spots on the wings, and does have yellow spots on the back of the eyes, though, so i’m still not completely convinced.
沯
Toxoplasma Modified Humans – i’m glad to see that people who actually know what they’re talking about are looking into this, because i have been suspicious of Toxoplasma gondii for number of years, and this guy seems to be talking about the same stuff that i’ve been wondering about for a long time. the big question is: is ‘the meaning of life’ merely to accelerate the reproductive cycle of a parasitic protozoa? disturbingly, it also sounds suspiciously like the scientologists’ story about microscopic aliens controlling our behaviour…
Can we arrest him now? – i guess the phrase about “liberty and justice for all” was only for some people… 😐
the new BBWP
i can’t really say anything about the new BBWP performance (primarily because despite the fact that we’re scheduled to perform in about 4 weeks, we haven’t actually decided what the performance is going to be, yet), but here’s a hint…
stanley
good boy. wanna step up? cool… sweet! beep! big noise… big noise! beep! wanna bite? chirp!
i think it was a bit hasty to assume that he’s going to have the intelligence of a 3 year old child. maybe eventually, but he’s still kind of a baby – two or three years old – and he hasn’t learned very much yet…
but he whistles bits and pieces of what is quite obviously the bach cello suite #1 in g, and he says chirp regularly… although he may have known that word before we got him…
沮
wuff…
friday the banda gozona performed at folklife. friday was also the day that my mother-in-law, father-in-law, and his wife came to visit, for the combined holiday, moe’s sheep trial, and my mother-in-law’s 60th birthday. i left at 3:00 and didn’t get home until 9:00, whereupon i discovered one of our doggles loose in the bedroom and the bathroom totally trashed, with ibuprophen tablets spilled all over the place, and what looked like a few chewed ibuprophen tablets among the trashed counter contents that were on the floor.
i’m actually surprised that moe and her relatives aren’t at home – i was unaware of their plans, but i anticipated them being at home, in which case this wouldn’t actually be an emergency, but… i’m not sure, but it looks to me like it could be an “accidental” overdose on the part of the guilty party (paddy), so i call moe, who isn’t answering her phone. i call her father’s cell phone, and he’s not answering either, which i find quite strange, since he is, presumably, in the same general vicinity as moe, and i know for a fact that her sheep trial doesn’t start until tomorrow, but i am faced with a possible overdosing dog and i’m starting to freak out, so i call our good friend micah, who is a veterinarian, and he’s not answering his phone either.
now i’m really freaking out… 🙁
eventually i get hold of moe, who has been out to dinner with her parents, she comes home and vomits the dog, who wasn’t overdosing on anythign except toilet paper (she had eaten almost an entire roll, which was sitting on the counter), and everything was fine, although it left me (and everyone else) totally exhausted.
yesterday, i got an order for postcards, and i spent most of the day going back and forth with a trained, experienced graphic artist who (apparently) can’t differentiate between a file that is 250 dpi and RGB with exactly the same file that is 300 dpi and CMYK. when we finally got that all worked out, i went to a going away party for möppi, rebeccah and diemo, who are moving back to germany next month, and i got home, totally exhausted, at 10:00 or so.
today, i got up at an ungodly hour (8:00 am), feeling nauseous – 
– but not actually nauseous enough to throw up (which i figured would make the nauseous feeling go away), and made it to folklife for a (relatively) early (1:10 pm) performance of the ballard sedentary sousa band. i didn’t actually get sick, although there were a few touch-and-go moments in the morning before i left, but i wanted to get there fairly early, because, unlike the banda gozona performance, which resulted in my possesion of a parking pass, so that i wouldn’t have to pay, the powers that be apparently figured that the ballard sedentary sousa band only needed two parking passes, which went to the two most senior members of the band, so in order to park, i would have to search out a free spot (practically impossible, given the location and time) or pay $15 to park until 2:30.
i got home at about 3:30, absolutely exhausted, and submitted the order for the postcards.
now, completely bereft of spoons, i’m going to spent the rest of my “holiday” weekend sleeping.
wesak was last thursday. i watched the monks at the buddhist temple down the street putting up decorations, but i totally spaced out mentioning it until now.
the aparajita is supposed to arrive on wednesday or thursday of this week. it’s down to the wire and i still don’t have tracking details from india, but the guy called me(!) to tell me when the shipment was supposed to be here.
Quantity discrimination in salamanders – they can tell the difference, but only when the ratio is 2:1 or greater… but these guys get paid to discover if salamanders can count. i obviously went into the wrong profession…
Man crosses English Channel in chair carried by helium balloons – including “coming down quickly to avoid restricted air space, missing a power line and then bouncing a short distance before coming to a halt” near dunkirk. once again, it appears as though i went into the wrong profession. what was i thinking?
a little more information about hat lust
it’s available here for those of you who might be interested in purchasing it for me… 8)
hat lust…
but it’s $150, so i think i can probably wait a little while for it…
i don’t normally do this, but…
this is so over-the-top ridiculous that there has to be an exception this time…
McDonald’s announces a drink made of Shrek-jizz.
yeah…
not as if i ate at McD’s regularly (or irregularly) anyway, but this doesn’t encourage me in the least. it is either going to be good for business in a way that they probably haven’t realised yet, or it won’t last very long and they won’t know what you’re talking about once it’s gone…
i wonder how long it’s going to be before someone makes a bukkake joke and ruins it for everyone…
沭
so the guy emailed me this morning and said that he’s shipped out the incense sticks, so it’s just a matter of time at this point. he said that he’d get back to me with tracking details when he gets them, and until then i can’t be 100% sure that he’s acually sent me anything at all… and, of course, i won’t know for sure that he’s actually sent me authentic aparajita or a fake until i actually recieve them, which, according to the schedule, will be ten days from now.
joe
those of you who actually read this blog on the web may or may not have noticed the little guy in the upper left hand corner of the page (who is also posted in this entry) has replaced my incense swastika. for those of you who don’t know, this is Joe Btfsplk, the world’s worst jinx, a character from Li’l Abner, a comic strip by Al Capp. he bears a striking resemblence to myself, except that he doesn’t have a beard or glasses. he also has an unpronouncable name, rather like Abgithetz Qwrashamenkegadikeshbamratztaghaqamamamnayaglepzeqsheqiayeth or przxqgl. in spite of the fact that Mr. Capp, himself, pronounced joe’s name as a raspberry, i like to think of him as Joe But-IF-splik, sort of the same way i think that przxqgl should be pronounced pir-ZIX-quiggle. he’s depicted as the world’s worst jinx, but he also appears to know that things go wrong around him all the time, and he shows up at just the right moment to cause spectacular failure to those who may otherwise be obstacles to “good” and “right”. you can tell it’s joe, because of the little black rain cloud which follows him around. at one point, he develops the technology to capture his cloud and is no longer a jinx. he gets married and appears to be blissfully happy, but something happens that requires him to release his cloud in order to cause some sort of catastrophe to some evil-doer.
joe btfsplk has been a hero of mine for a long time, which is kind of odd, because i don’t know of anybody else who even knows who he is, much less considers him a hero.
stanley!
stanley just said “chirp”!
repeatedly!
i am SO jazzed that he’s starting to imitate me… 😀
announcing the end of “christianity” as you know it
US team creates first ’synthetic life’ – along with that important step that came on my birthday, eight years ago, when scientists fabricated an entirely viable polio virus, we’ve taken another important step in clarifying the fact that “christianity” is wrong.
wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG, WRONG!!!
i wonder how long it will be until the “christians” take notice?
Continue reading announcing the end of “christianity” as you know it
growf…
so i sent money to india to get aparajita incense…
wouldn’t you know, right as they were getting ready to ship me the product, a cyclone strikes and no shipping can be done because of inclement weather…
i hope the Remover of Obstacles has His finger on the pulse of things here… 😐
沫
US drug war has met none of its goals – good ol’ gil’s working his way up the totem pole, and he’s still saying exactly the same thing he was saying ten years ago… i’d wonder about why nobody has taken any notice, but it would be a futile gesture. :/
tah daaah!
finally!
i called maaco, and they said that it would cost around $200 to clear-coat the hood, depending on how the preparation goes. i told the guy that i would hesitate to spend that much on the car if there was something wrong with the engine, and my budget was around $100. he said that i should bring it by tomorrow, which i’m going to do, but i’m not expecting much. it’s possible that rick at edgewood tire has some suggestions, but i haven’t asked him.
i’m probably going to go get my tuba soldered tomorrow afternoon, or some time in the relatively near future.
i sent $500 to india for 20 dozen boxes of aparajita. i got an invoice for it, so i’m a little less suspicious than i would have been otherwise, but i still don’t know for sure that it’s going to be aparajita that the guy sends me. at this point, it’s wait and see, because i’ve already sent the money. there’s another incense retailer that’s going to buy half of the 20 dozen as soon as i get them, which is good, because i don’t have the space to store 20 dozen boxes of incense.
sent from my phone
This is a test
卐
so there has been a great deal of kerfuffle over the past few years concerning this building, the Coronado Naval Amphibious Base, and the navy’s $600,000 waste of taxpayer’s money to “disguise” the shape of the building so that nobody will notice that it’s shaped like a swastika.
the fact that this artificial body of water has, apparently, been missed, even though it is bigger, and probably more deliberately shaped like a swastika, is astounding to me…
although the fact that it is in china probably helps matters a little bit…
Evidence suggests that DNA emits light
Are humans really beings of light? – i came to believe this, for purely spiritual reasons, more than 30 years ago. it’s refreshingly different to see evidence of this coming from the scientific realm as well, despite the fact that i found the link on disinformation… 8)
taking shape
one of the disadvantages to using “inferior” quality paint, instead of one-shot, is that the black paint has a tendency to flake off in certain areas, and i have had to go back over the already painted portion of the previous two or three lines and fill in the parts that have flaked off. fortunately, apparently, once i’ve gone over them and filled in the parts that have flaked off, they don’t continue to flake (i’ve had to do it a couple of times now), so i’ve been able to continue, but it’s yet another reason why i want to finish painting as quickly as possible and clear coat it before it all flakes off.
the gold, on the other hand, is looking really good, and is not flaking at all.
it rained on and off yesterday, so i couldn’t work on it much, except to touch up some of the places where the paint had flaked off… the tape that, according to the packaging, wasn’t supposed to leave a sticky residue, but, in reality, does leave a very sticky residue, is A PAIN IN THE ASS!
dead people!
why does nobody tell me these things? 🙁
at the same time, this is a message to all of the cool people in the world: STOP DYING!
quick update
my host provider has decided that he’s going to stay in business for his existing customers but not take any new customers. it eases my concern about finding a new host provider immediately, but i’m still going to move eventually, because i really don’t like being jerked around like that. the first time you said you were sorry and i gave you another chance, but the second time it was entirely my fault, and i don’t want it to happen again.
in other news, my copy of The Beatles Complete Scores came in the mail today. this is a book that i have wanted ever since it was first published in 1989, and it’s 1136 pages of the actual music by John Lenon and Paul McCartney from the people who would know. this means that i can now work on arrangements of things like Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite for Snake Suspenderz without having to rely on somebody else’s frequently incorrect interpretations of what the chords are… and i can finally figure out the chords for Michelle, which i have been wondering about for 30 years… 8)
now, off to get denatured alcohol. i ran out yesterday and i need it to clean up the sticky residue which was not left by the lining tape on my car, because the packaging said that it didn’t leave a sticky residue, so, in spite of the fact that, when i pull the tape off my car, it leaves a sticky residue, apparently, it wasn’t left by the tape… 😐
oh yeah, i got email from someone who wants to interview “Rev. Guido DeLuxe” concerning the Church of Tina Chopp. she said she was interested in tracking down the truth behind the rumours… she was also born in 1988, which was well after the church had established its presence… i wonder what sort of gibberish i should spout in order to confuse her even more… hey, she wrote to me…
沪
half-way, and with the sun hitting the surface so that the gold shows a lot better. this is gonna be cooool!
i’m toying with ideas for the sides. the lining tape is a royal pain in the ass, but it’s really good for layout stuff…
沩
i went to an art car show in kirkland last week, and painted about a quarter of a line before i had some serious problems with my purple paint pen and ended up splattering purple paint all over the part that i had already painted, so there was a great deal of clean up last week instead of steady progress. i went to an art car show in fremont today, and had a much easier time of it. i decided that the purple wasn’t turning out the way i wanted it anyway, because it fades in a day and it was taking too long to re-do the purple part, so i decided to change it to gold, which doesn’t fade anywhere near as quickly. i actually was able to finish two lines of sanskrit. i probably would have been able to accomplish a lot more, but the package of lining tape that i bought specifically because it said “does not leave a sticky residue” was actually a lie, and i’ve had to clean up the sticky residue from the lining tape before i am able to paint a new line of sanskrit.
oy… 8/
so the host provider that i finally settled with in january, after leaving them for someone else, because they wanted to raise my rates by 300%, but decided not to after i switched to the host provider that decided i couldn’t have a mailing list after helping me set up a mailing list, so i switched back… and, surprisingly, has been doing a more or less outstanding job ever since…
that same host provider is apparently going out of business for “personal reasons”. the “personal reasons”?
the owner is 16 years old, and is the president of his high school’s linux club, and doesn’t have time for it any longer… 8/
damn, damn, DAMN!! 😡
stanley
stanley has been warming up to me gradually since we got him. he talks a lot, but the only things i’ve been able to understand are “step up”, “no bite”, “good boy” and various variations on “hey birdy birdy bird”. he’s sort of like a human kid who learns a few words before he’s sure of what they mean, so he frequently rambles without making much sense, but he steps up onto my hand without biting me most of the time now, and he takes food from my hand, although sometimes he takes the food and throws it away, and he still growls when i come too close sometimes… and he bit my finger and drew blood just a moment ago. it’s just a tiny scratch, but…
we’re training him to sing the bach cello suite #1 in G, which means that i made a recording of the suite and applied a pan flute voice to it (which is as close as i had to a sample of someone whistling), and i currently have it playing in a loop. monique’s going to start clicker-training him next week.
qwest SUCKS!
UPDATE: i got a comment from "steph at qwest", to which i am responding here. whether i actually got a response from a human being or not has yet to be determined, but either way, i feel like ranting again, so here goes.
i called them at 5:30 pm yesterday, because internet had not been working all day, and i had to go through the same automated bullshit again, which “detected a problem” and connected me to a live person, who asked me what lights were on my “modem” (which is actually a router, but i’ve given up trying to educate these clowns), and then told me to pull the power cord out of the back of the “modem”. when i told him that i couldn’t do that, but that i could turn it off with a power switch, he didn’t know what to do, and so i had to wait on hold while he went to find out. he returned and said that i should turn it off and leave it off until he came back, and i had to wait on hold again while he did some sort of mysterious thing. when he came back and told me to turn on the “modem” again, he was sort of surprised by the fact that it returned to having no “internet” or “DSL” lights lit, couldn’t give me a reason why it should not be working, and was about to put me on hold again when, suddenly, the connection lights lit up. i told him this and he wondered why it should have taken so long, but as long as it was working, that was good enough for him.
i am really frustrated with these people, because they read from scripts, complete with scripted “compliments” (which i can tell are scripted because they come at totally inopportune moments, and are identical, even down to the inflection and tone of voice, coming from at least three different “technicians”), don’t have any clue what they’re really doing, talk down to me, and say everything is all right, when it’s not exactly all right. i realise that networking is a complex business: i have worked in the electronic communications industry for 15 years, and i know that some things don’t have straightforward answers. to give me “pat” answers demeans my intelligence, and when they’re scripted to the point of inflection and tone of voice, it makes me feel as though they think they’re talking to an idiot… when, in reality, it’s very likely that i know more about how their network actually works than they do.
it turned out that they had fixed whatever had exploded, and internet had been “fixed” for two hours when i called them, but nobody had thought to call and tell me. also, almost as soon as i hung up the phone, my connection lights turned red, and then went out all together, and it was a half hour more before they would do anything more than light up green for about two minutes, and then go red and go out for 10 minutes or so… 😡
qwest sucks
so, about 10:00 this morning, i was sitting there reading my email and there was this huge explosion outside, and shortly thereafter, all of my internet connectivity vanished. i called qwest and went through their automated disturbance detector, and it detected a problem (big surprise) and connected me to a human representative, who promptly hung up on me. so i had to call and go through the automated bullshit again before i could get connected to another human representative, who couldn’t get any response from my line. i told him that it was probably because there had been an explosion before i called, but he persisted in trying to run his “tests” anyway, and when that didn’t work, he called in his supervisor to run the tests, just to make sure. the representative i talked to didn’t sound like he was an “outsourced technician” (in other words, he didn’t have an identifiable ethnic accent), but his speech was strange, like he was reading from a script and didn’t actually know what he was doing. he said that they had alerted the technicians that would see what the problem was, but he had no idea when it would be fixed. it’s currently 4:30 and there’s still no internet. and this is from a company who claims that their internet connections are 99.99% reliable. 😐
i can still access wirelessly via our neighbour’s unsecured wireless router, which i suspect is a cable, rather than a DSL.
Indian gentleman makes ass of Professor P.Z. Meyers
some of this story suffers from being written by a person (or people) whose native language is not english, but still, there’s enough scientific and journalistic integrity to make me severely wonder what ol’ P.Z. would make of it:
ETA: apparently he would do it differently… oh well, i guess i couldn’t have expected a lot more.
Miracle man survives without food for 70 years
Ahmedabad, Apr 26: Survival of a Hindu ascetic, claimed to be not taking food or water and not passing stool or urine for over 70 years, has baffled the medical fraternity and now defence experts are studying about the miracle man to emulate the practice for soldiers1.
Experts of Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS), in collaboration with the doctors of the city-based Sterling Hospital, have launched an observational study of the 81-year-old Prahladbhai Jani alias ‘Mataji’2, who is living in a cave in the temple town of Ambaji in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district.
The round the clock study from April 22 to May 7 will cover all aspects of physiology and biochemistry. The saint is kept in isolation at a special ward in the hospital and even mediapersons were kept out of bounds.
Talking to mediapersons at the hospital, Dr Sudhir Shah, a neurologist, and Dr Ila Wazgan of DIPAS said the main aim of the project is to study how a human being can survive without consuming food or water and not passing stool or urine for so long.
Dr Shah, who had conducted a similar study on the saint in 2003, said ‘There are incidents of prolonged fastings in our country. But they have been taking some water. In the case of Jani, he is not taking any food or water. What is medically more important and baffling is the fact that he is not passing stool or urine’.
The saint has informed the doctors that he has rare ‘Kundalini’ power (serpentine energy), a Yogic feat.3
Explaining the rationale behind the study, Dr Wazgan said ”If we can find out the reason or unveil the mystery behind Mr Jani’s survival without food and water, the study may help in working out strategies in managing calamaty-struck people, soldiers deployed at extremely hostile terrains like high altitude mountains and places with the scarcity of water and food”.
Considering the interest taken by DIPAS, some new parameters have been added to the study, Dr Shah said.
An interesting fact ascertained by doctors is that Mr Jani’s brain is as efficient as that of a 25-year old young man though he is aged 81. There are no signs of aging. Even today he can climb a seven storey building without any exhaustion, said Dr Shah.
The saint has shown evidences of formation of urine, which seems to be reabsorbed from his bladder wall. However, at present the medicos do not have any scientific explanation for the same but help of senior scientists and medical personnel of the country is being taken for the same.
A series of investigations are being carried out on Mr Jani according to a pre-determined protocol and additional tests are carried out as per suggestions of the team.
”If everything is ok with Jani, the study on his condition will continue for ten or 15 days. The defence wing wants to understand what is the structure of Mr Jani’s body, what is special about it, because of which he can survive normally. Whether the same can be replicated in other’s body, is the main question. If the answer is yes, it could be useful for soldiers and astrologers’4, added Dr Wazgan.
As per the details provided by Mr Jani’s followers, at the age of seven years, he left home in search of spiritual unfoldment. At the age of eleven years he was blessed by a goddess. He claims that since that blessing, he has gained his sustenance from nectar that filters down through a hole in his palate5, and has not passed urine or stools since then.
Mr Jani had explained to his followers, ”I get the elixir of life from the hole in my palate, which enables me to go without food and water”. Almost daily Mr Jani enters a state of Samadhi characterised by extreme bliss and enormous light and strength. He says that he has never experienced medical problems. He says that he did not speak for a period of forty-five years.
A Video of Prahladbhai Jani is also available, for those of you who might be skeptical.
1: the problem is that for soldiers to actually achieve the state that Mr. Jani has achieved, they would have to give up being soldiers.
2: the name “mataji” means “respected mother”… ?
3: Obsolete A specialised skill or profession. trust Indian journalists to use obsolete English…
4: “and astrologers“… ??
5: i learned about this while i was going through the preparation for my 2nd Kriya initiation, but i didn’t give it much thought at the time…
doing something right
i was outside working on the layout for Ganesha the Car, and i decided to come inside to check on stanley, and check my email. i stepped in the door, and it started to hail, complete with thunder, both of which are considered good omens. the sky is clear and blue, with fluffy clouds, now, five minutes later. 8)
aparajita
so apparently i can get no less than 20 dozen boxes of aparajita(!!) for a ridiculously cheap price, and get it shipped directly to my door in less than 10 days for $200, or i can get it shipped “the long way” and it would take around a month, and i would have to clear the product at customs, and it will cost about $180.
you can guess which direction i am leaning… 😉
apparently i can also get 50 or 60 dozen boxes, and get the same carton shipped for the same $200 to my door, or $180 with hassles at customs.
quite apart from anything else, i don’t know what i’d do with 60 dozen boxes (720 boxes) of incense. i don’t know where i’d store them. i have just barely enough money to pay for 60 dozen boxes without shipping (i can do 20 dozen, but it will set me back a little). with shipping, however, it puts me well over what i can afford…
on the other hand, i’ve been looking for a reliable supplier of aparajita for 10 years, and have given up hope of finding one more than twice.
ETA: i’ve also got a call into another big time incense geek who may want to split it with me… hope! 8)
BSSB
the ballard sedentary sousa band has a new web site. check it out and tell me what you think.
oy…
so people are apparently convinced that the picture on the right (which is a field outside of püspökladány, hungary) is an image of jesus, but i think it looks a lot more like frank zappa… what do you think?
introducing stanley
ketchup
it’s raining and blustery today, so i can’t work on my car, which gives me some time to catch up on some other things.
moe and i are getting an african grey parrot named stanley this evening, and i’ve been fixing up a corner of the living room to accommodate him. it’s exciting, but it’s also as though we were getting a 3-year-old child, in terms of intelligence and need for taking proper precautions. moe has been wondering how long it’s going to be until stanley learns how to bark like magick, and conversely, wondering how long it will be until he learns to yell at magick for barking… which, i suppose, is just as valid as me wondering how long it’s going to be before stanley learns to make the jews-harp noise, or the tuba noise, or the flex-a-tone noise, or the glass-marble-in-a-bottle noise, or any one of a number of other noises which usually results in one or more of us yelling at magick to quit barking and be quiet. moe says that parrots are kind of like kids, in that they’ll quiz you to find out what they shouldn’t do, and then focus all their time and ability to doing that very thing. exciting is one way of putting it.
i got a phone call(!) from india(!!) this morning, from a guy who wants me to consider becoming a customer of his enterprise, which is the manufacture and export (from india) of incense, murtis and other hindu/hippie stuff. i’ve gotten a number of email inquiries like this in the past, and while i generally delete them without responding, i perked up when this guy said that he could get aparajita. i still don’t know in what quantities or for what price, but this is a lot closer than i’ve ever gotten before, and if i play my cards right, it could mean a lot more than just aparajita, as he apparently also has lines on narmada shivalingams and rudrakhsha beads. 8)
3D printer could build moon bases – somebody’s finally taken this concept to a logical conclusion, and wouldn’t you know, it had to be an artist.
Briton ‘gets Chinese accent after bad migraine’ – more people having problems with their brain and ending up with problems with their language. i’m beginning to wonder if this is a new problem, or if things like this have been going on all along.
Burials in Tibet – the original headline included the words "not for sensitive souls"… it shows how a different culture chooses to honor those who have died. what’s wrong with that?
yee haw!!
it’s going to work even better than it did on the mockup! 😀
there’s a minor problem, though, which is that the original paint is cracking when i lean on the hood. and it’s practically impossible not to lean on the hood when i’m working that close to the windshield… but i’m going to have to come up with something, because leaning over on one arm isn’t going to do it: i get too tired, and i have to use too much concentration to be reliable leaning on my arm…
yeah, i know… i’m asking for it…
the design that i blotted out yesterday was definitely wrong, and i’m really glad i listened to my gut and did it, because it was the right thing to do. the picture to the right is the new plan – although it’s going to be sanskrit writing, and not a blue background (which was put there with a computer, to gauge dimensions) – and i’m already more than aware of the fact that people are going to ask me, and harrass me, and that sort of thing, about the swastika on my car, perhaps even more than with the previous car.
but, see, the problem is that when i look at that plan, i get this gooey feeling right here <taps chest>, that i get when i look at my wife, which is an indication that i have created and not just art… and this is just the hood of the car! i can hardly wait to see what the rest of it is going to look like. 🙂
i just noticed this…
look at this image:
that is an image that i created a number of years ago: it’s a screen shot of an error message that i was given by internet explorer exploder immediately prior to rebooting my computer, because IE had crashed so spectactularly that it brought down the entire machine. i don’t remember when it happened, but it was a number of years ago, because it is number two in my set of computer errors that i started putting together before my injury and after i started testing software.
now have a look at this collection of pictures. from what i can tell, this is a list of other places that my screen shot ended up, usually with headlines like “Why IE is Better: Can Firefox do THIS?”…
i’m not sure whether to be honoured or irritated…
ongoing…
i decided that the layout was wrong, so i started again.
happy international cannabis appreciation day
i was walking home from the post office this morning, and i saw this truck, so i took a few pictures. as i was walking away, i noticed this guy staring at me from across the parking lot, and, as it happens, my path pretty much intersected where he was standing, so i figured that he was responsible for the truck and wanted to ask me why i was acting suspiciously around it. as i walked over, he said “can i help you with something?” i replied, “well, i was taking pictures of the truck because it says ‘Stoner Voice & Data’ on it, and today’s 420…” he said “So?” so i said “well, 420 and ‘Stoner’ sort of go together”, and wandered off.
does he really have no clue what the word “stoner” means these days? was he deliberately trying to get me to “incriminate” myself by drawing the comparison between his truck and cannabis?
oh well… happy 420.
Gajaanana and Eyjafjallajökull
so i got started on the actual artwork for Ganesha the Car, version 2, in spite of the fact that it was spitting rain all afternoon. there wasn’t enough moisture to affect the process, and i really wanted to get started on it, because i’ve got an art-car show in a little more than 2 weeks. i’m still not completely sure of the layout, because sanskrit has some weird length issues, especially since i am essentially transcribing a printed document in calligraphy, but if everything goes according to plan, i should have just about as many names on the hood of Ganesha v.2 as i had on the entire Ganesha v.1… although i still wonder whether i’m really going to have enough room or not. i figured that, since there’s no guarantee that Ganesha the Car v.2 is actually going to be a functioning car for very long, i would put some considerably less “permanent” artwork on it. to that end, i bought a bunch of uni paint pens, thanks to an art-cartist i talked to at SACBO last year. while i am impressed with how well they work in general, i still think that i’m going to get a clear-coat put on after i’m finished, because the paint pens are a good deal less permanent than the 1Shot that i used on v.1
in other news, apparently “Eyjafjallajökull” is sort of like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in that unless you’re from there, you’d be better off not trying to pronounce it. case in point:
snep
Regarding "christianity" and the Virginia Governor’s reason for declaring Confederate History Month
7,500 Online Shoppers Unknowingly Sold Their Souls – this is what happens when users fail to read the TOC. i find it interesting and educational to realise that in the commercial world there are two significant industries that refer to their customers as “users”: computer software manufacturers, and drug dealers. perhaps this is one of the reasons why.
Dead man elected mayor of Tennessee town – why is it that all i can think of is that line from the Tom Waits song What’s he Building?, “I heard he has an ex-wife in someplace called ‘Mayor’s Income, Tennessee’.”
finally, i have read in two different blogs about the croatian girl who fell into a coma, and when she awoke, she could no longer speak croatian, her native language, but she could speak fluent german, a language that she was just beginning to learn when she fell into a coma. i find this an interesting paralell to my opera, which sprung to life in all of its complex glory when i lost what passes for normal consciousness as a result of my injury. stories like this have far reaching implications that involve just about every part of my life, and is one of the primary reasons why, in spite of the fact that i agree with him more often than not, i still think that p.z. meyers and his ilk are sadly mistaken when they conclusively state that “god” doesn’t exist. it may not be the old man with the beard that oversees all from his abode in the clouds, but Something that doesn’t exist wouldn’t be able to cause miracles like that.
bleep
the past three days have been spent going through just my inventory of incense with the price gun labeler, individually pricing all of my incense. i plan on doing the same thing for the murtis as well, but they will only take a couple of hours. now i won’t have to fumble with a huge sheaf of papers when someone asks me how much something is, and i will charge the correct price for the things for which i can’t find the prices.
i got the flyers that i had printed for Edgewood Tire & Complete Auto Repair today. that’s another easy $200. i also got the paint pens that i’ve been waiting on, so either tomorrow or sunday i’m going to start working on Ganesha The Car Version 2.
moe and i are going to start the “cook once a month” thing again… tomorrow, i think. i was really happy with cooking once a month for the few months we tried it last year, but about october or so we didn’t do it, and are only just resuming the practice. for those of you who don’t know, it involves planning ahead to have a dozen or so recipes that you’ll make, buying a whole bunch of groceries, and spending an entire day doing nothing but cooking, packaging and freezing individual meal-sized portions for the entire month. it is a massively cheap way to do it, because you can buy a lot of the groceries at costco (we ended up spending about $300 a month, and that was with a couple of times going out to fancy restaurants), and it has the added benefit of freeing up time every other day of the following month that would have been used cooking for that day. quiche is among my favourites. and lentil soup. and now that we’ve got a medium sized freezer with new hinges (!!), we’ve even got a place to keep it all instead of having to limit how much we make because we only had a tiny freezer. 8)
Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either) – enough said. Cory Doctorow is God!
spammers
okay, this is getting ridiculous, but at the same time, i’m really glad i got myself far away from 1&1 internet services, and now i’m going to recommend that my associates distance themselves from 1&1 as well… and you spammers have succeeded in irritating me enough that i’m ranting about it in public. 😯
it started out with a spam message that “made it through” the spamcop defense, but didn’t make it through my local instance of spam assassin that i run on my local mail host. one of the reasons why i’m satisfied with doing so is that if i use a web-based service like yahoo, hotmail or gmail is that, none of my mail, contacts, calenders and that sort of thing “live” on a computer over which i have direct, physical control… and my information is my information, thank you. it also makes it a hell of a lot easier to parse headers and report the spam messages that do manage to sneak through my defenses (which are around 5 or so a week, these days). spam assassin puts the messages that it detects into my wastebasket, without any prompting from me, but if i’m feeling obstreperous, i’ll pull it out and report it anyway, which is what i did with a message that looked like it had come from me: it had someone else’s name, and my email address in the To: line – which is notoriously easy to spoof. it also had a URI that tracks directly back to oneandone.com.
yes, a host provider that i used, and then discarded a year ago when they tried to scam me, hosts spammers.
and spammers dumb enough to think that i might respond in any way other than the way i did, to a message that looks like it came from myself!
that’s all the justification i need to avoid them. 😐
pirates and piracy
US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus – which means that i won’t be causing the RIAA as much loss for downloading the bit torrent of a record that has been out of print for 20 years as i would have before? right? 🙄
picture
this is not a title
the world needs more girl sousaphone players…
my performances at Honk! Fest went off without a hitch, more or less. i got up at an ungodly hour (7:30) and made it to the first performance, at Casa Latina, by 9:00, where they didn’t know what was going on, and my ability to understand spanish is only because of my vague knowledge of french and latin, so i wandered around in the international district for 45 minutes or so until other honk fest/band related people showed up. we played for an hour, and then we had a break until 3:00, so i went and got breakfast and took a nap for an hour or so. the second performance was after the Extraordinary Rendition Band performed. the latino guy that’s standing in the background is someone from my band, and i suppose that i should probably know what his name is, because i’ve known him for a few years now, but i don’t… (is it yeba ignacio? i’m not sure…) i don’t suppose that it’s partially because he only speaks limited english, and i would only make myself look foolish if i tried to speak spanish…
DJ RX – White Lines is an interesting treatment of the song… in a lot of ways, it’s better than the original.
miscellaneous honk blat wak wak wak ungow
one doesn’t tend to notice annoyances that have disappeared, but i just realised that the guy who has been sending me spam with great regularity, at least once a month, for five-plus years hasn’t sent me a spam message since november of last year. i won’t claim sole responsibility for ridding the net of this annoyance, but i would be willing to bet that the multiple reports of his spam i made to the washington state attorney general’s office couldn’t have slowed down his departure too much.
the new Ganesha The Car is probably not going to be a car very much longer. there’s nothing wrong with it currently, but the transmission is on its last legs, and from what the people at the repair shop (not the repair shop from which i got the car, a different one) told me, the ’93 Mercury Tracer (which is also called a “Ford Fiesta Escort” for some unknown reason) is notorious for transmission and engine problems, and pretty much anything that goes substantially wrong with it will very likely cost more to fix than the car is worth. at the same time, i didn’t actually pay for the car to begin with, and the repair shop that i got it from will very likely do things like replace the transmission for far less than other places would, because we fall under the “friends and family” category with the owner of the shop – which is also part of the reason why i didn’t pay for the car to begin with.
in the short term, this means that i have even more impetus to create “temporary” artwork on the car, using paint pens instead of a brush and one-shot. daniel smith’s has a piss-poor selection of paint pens, but i picked up some black, and some gold pens. i’m hoping that i can find a wider assorement of colours somewhere else.
frustration is finding a bittorrent of something that you really want, and downloading 99.3% of it – with 8 “leeches” and a “seeder” who only logs in after midnight – before getting stuck and spending weeks repeatedly opening up your network to a DOS attack while you wait for the remainder to appear… all i need is 1.16 MB of information and then i’ll have the whole thing… is that too much to ask?
a guy advertised “Goldblatt drywall stilts. Rubber is good, but the straps are shot and some minor hardware needs replacing.” on freecycle, earlier in the week, and i responded, because i can probably fix the things that they have wrong with them, and then i’ll have a set of drywall stilts… unfortunately, i didn’t notice that the guy’s email host is christian.net, and the quote that automatically appended to the signature of my message was “Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world. — Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet), 1694-1778″…
he didn’t reply, so i sent him another message this afternoon. the quote that automatically appended to the signature of that message was “The more you complain, the longer God lets you live.” i still have recieved no response from him, but i get the impression that the probability of my recieving a response from him is miniscule at this point. oh well… if nothing else, i can post a wanted to freecycle for drywall stilts. if i’m really lucky, the same guy will respond… 😉
i’ve got to get up and go to a gig that banda gozona is playing for part of Honk! Fest West at 9:00 tomorrow morning. there’s another gig that banda gozona is playing at 3:00 pm as well, which means that i can’t even go home and get some rest between the shows. the music that we’re playing is all stuff that i know the tuba parts for quite well. unfortunately, i’m playing trombone for tomorrow’s gigs, and the trombone parts are really fast, with a lot of notes that range from E an octave below middle C to A an octave above middle C within a measure. i’m reasonably certain that i can play most of the notes, and i’m sure i can play all of the notes at a reduced speed, but the fact that there’s going to be at least one other trombone-range instrument (most likely euphonium, but another trombone isn’t out of the question) makes me a lot more at ease with this performance than i would be otherwise.
spoons &c.
i subscribe to a modified version of the spoon theory, and the past few weeks have definitely been ones in which i have pushed the limits of my spoons, traded one day’s spoons for another day, and that sort of thing. now that the moisture festival is over for another year, it is important that i rest up and gather my spoons for a spring and summer that looks exciting and frightening at the same time.
i am expanding hybrid elephant in a number of ways: i have gotten at least one and potentially three or more new web clients, which may mean that i’m going to need more web space eventually(!), and i have been talking with bfly about teaming up to teach some classes(!!).
i talked with dan from nanda about printing business cards and postcards for them.
i have also decided, now that moisture festival is out of the way, that i’m going to have my tuba “seen to” by someone that can re-solder the outside guard bracing that’s come loose, replace several missing braces that are currently being held together with zip ties, and tackle the third valve slide that is wider at one end than it is at the other, and is just waiting for me to bump it a little bit too hard in the wrong direction so that it will totally lock up and never move again.
i also have a new art car project to work on. i have every intention of putting all 1008 names of ganesha on my new art car, which, of course, will mean that i will have to write them a lot smaller than i did on the previous art car, which will doubtlessly mean more time spent on it. SACBO is in june, so that doesn’t really leave very much time…
Hunt-the-Gowk Day Redux
happy Hunt-the-Gowk Day – you tell me…
considering the date today, i can’t tell whether the following products are a joke or not…
at the same time, it would explain a lot about “popular” music these days…
Turd Polisher Pro – a VST plugin for SFX Machine?
MF-401 Auto De-tune – an actual hardware device for your studio, from Moog Music?
makes me wonder what would happen if you pitted one of these against the other? would the result be interesting, or boring? would it create a perpetual motion machine or a time vortex? which one would fail first?
death
tom bennett is dead.
i didn’t know him that well, but i knew him well enough that when i saw him in the grocery store, i remembered who he was and exchanged hellos with him. he was the owner of edgewood tire and auto repair, and before that, TST auto, for both of which i printed stuff. i went up to their shop this morning to drop off business cards and that’s where i learned of tom’s death. apparently he was shot this morning at the top foods in auburn, by a shirt-tail relative of some sort.
links
☻☺
i have been digging through mounds of PHP code recently, looking for <hr> tags and not finding them, and figuring out ways to make links disappear and stuff like that for the past couple of days. i believe i may have actually put the finishing touches on the sedentary sousa web site, but i’m not going to post it until i get approval from the boss lady.
moe’s friend holly is staying with us for a couple of nights. i don’t know her very well, but she and moe are good friends from way back.
thanks, mom… 8/
apparently i am genetically predisposed to arthritis in my hands, thanks to my maternal grandmother. the pain that i have been having in the base of my left thumb for the past month or so, apparently, is not going to go away. i have to get a splint to hold my thumb in place when it gets too painful, and the doctor told me to take ibuprophen… getting old sucks! now i’m beginning to understand what my grandmothers – on both sides of my family – were going through. hopefully robotic replacements will be developed before my hands completely fail… 8/
Wump-Faced Bat-Fart Boy
100319 bat back stage at the palladium
TARFU!
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.
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.
coming to the end of another moisture festival
i met ukulele dick at the moisture festival the other day. his “real name”, acording to his schtick, is Banjo Penis. i traded him a copy of serpentine for a copy of his ukulele dick cd and a copy of his “Dick Dujour” cd, Music to Scare Children by. i’ve been listening to them on and off throughout the day, and i must say, the guy is more than just a ukulele player. i also made buttons for him that say “Act Dorky, Live Forever”. i’ve got performances on friday and sunday for sure, and possibly saturday.
the big news, or maybe not so big if you hang out with the right people, i guess, is that circus contraption is breaking up. i have no idea why, but i can imagine, as with most artistic organisations like that, that there were some artistic differences somewhere along the lines.
other news: my SSDI hearing is the 24th. i’m approaching it with an interesting mixture of hilarity and dread. i got to see part of the forms ned was filling out earlier in the week, and he said about 10 things, of which i would think that 1 of which should be enough to get me on the “disabled” list in a perfect world, but because of the fact that the world is decidedly imperfect, i don’t know if it will help or not. we’re going to work on it some more after the moisture festival is over.
also i’m getting ready to be able to accept credit cards on hybrid elephant, but i’ve only gotten one order since i went live with the new site, so i’m wondering if i can’t put it off for another month until i get more of an idea about whether or not people are going to notice it.
despite the fact that i won the battle of the computer in record time – this time – i learned a bunch of things that i didn’t know in the process. the main thing i learned is that the intermittent quiet scratching noise coming from the computer is the power supply fan, which, instead of turning on and doing what it is supposed to do when power is applied, in fact, it rotates weakly, not anywhere near fast enough to be anything like the heat sink that it’s supposed to be, and intermittently emits a scratching sound that makes me think that it, too, is not long for this world.
<stewie>victory is mine!</stewie>
linux computer is back up and working! i backed up my calendar and now i have it on both my main computers – with them cross-connected so that any changes i make on one will automatically show up on the other (which, it’s my understanding, that you can’t do on windoesn’t without a significant amount more futzing about than i was willing to put into the whole deal – thank you linus torvalds and steve jobs, fuck you bill gates), and i am currently backing up my /home directory (with all of my email) which is something that i was going to do right before the computer died, so that if it happens again i’ll be even more prepared the next time.
apparently i fried the processor. the guy i took it to, which is right down the hill from my house (extremely convenient) said that the processor heat-sink was installed backwards – thank you re-pc – but he just happened to have another processor of the same size and speed. it turned out that he had a huge box of brand new processors, one of which he installed, then put the heat-sink back the correct way, and hooked up the LEDs on the front of the computer (which i had never bothered to connect because they don’t actually do anything other than light up), and he only charged me $50, which makes him my new best friend.
GROWL!
linux computer is dead, which isn’t really surprising considering that is built out of spare bits and pieces of several other computers. i’ve ruled out the power supply, for two reasons: one is that i replaced it about six months ago, and the other is that i actually took my computer to RePC (where a lot of the parts came from) and had the guy check it out. he checked out the power supply (which lit up his testing device with green lights, indicating that the power supply is working correctly), but refused to look at it any further(!) because it was too dirty(!), despite the fact that it wasn’t that dirty and i have seen computers which worked fine and were orders of magnitude more dirty than mine was… still, i brought it home and cleaned it, but it still won’t boot.
unfortunately, i have a 1:00 call today and i’m performing until 1:00 tomorrow morning, then i have a 10:00 AM(!) call tomorrow and i’m assuming that i will be performing until 1:00 am monday, but i’m not sure because my calendar was on my linux computer and isn’t accessible, in spite of the fact that it’s probably still there. but one way or another, there’s a good chance that i won’t even get to look at my computer until monday, and given a perfect-case scenario, won’t actually get it working again until tuesday or wednesday, which means that i have to re-create my calendar somewhere other than my linux box.
fan fucking tastic… 8/
linux box is down. fortunately, i can switch to mac fairly easily, and the /home directory is on a separate disk from the main operating system, but i really don’t want to fight the battle of the computer again so soon after the last time. i’m a fair amount more prepared for it than the last time, but it’s still irritating as hell.
in other news, snake suspenderz played a gig at smokin’ pete’s barbecue this evening, which went well. tomorrow is my first day without a performance or a rehearsal in more than a week. i’m a busy musician during the moisture festival. two more weeks to go.
i hate spam! part 75
somebody registered on my blog today, something that isn’t necessary to comment. it was from someone who has never commented, i don’t know them, they registered a username that was unpronounceable, and the TLD of the email address was in russia.
needless to say, i deleted them. i don’t know about other wordpress users, but i get the impression that you’d have to be pretty dense, or not paying the slightest bit of attention, to NOT notice that this was created with the intension of abusing the services for which i pay for and for which i am responsible. 😛
the very big stupid
johnny jetpack
on friday, the combined birthdays of nathan arnold, aka johnny jetpack propulsion laboratories, and christopher huson, aka mr. bunny, among others was celebrated. combined total 100 years, 50 a piece. the fremont philharmonic played, as did the titanium sporkestra. nathan is a major source of inspiration for me, because he does really stupid cool things with dangerous substances like liquid nitrogen and high intensity lasers. there are a whole bunch of photos there, and all of them were made out of selected junk, with the exception of a smoke machine, which was actually not used that much…
and that thing that looks like a water bottle, is, in fact, a water bottle.
chautaqua elephant
i played in the Fighting Instruments of Karma Marching Chamber Band/Orchestra in the benefit show for the New Old-Time Chautaqua this afternoon. it’s a mass conflagration of incestuous artistic talent with which i have been associated on the edges of for the past 30 years or so: i play with eben, bernice, clayton and liz in the ballard sedentary sousa band, i’ve played music with stephan, kevin and karl from bellingham in a variety of groups since i was in college, i currently play with thad in snake suspenderz, i’ve played with heather in the fremont phil… the chautaqua has been described as a karass, which is, in fact, a very apt description. but i never realised how intimately involved i was with it until today, when i saw how many of my friends were all gathered together to do God’s will.
in other news, i finally got the problems that i’ve been having with Hybrid Elephant fixed. they weren’t serious or visible problems (the graphics were showing up in the store, but not in the admin part), but they were a concern, especially if i end up switching host providers again, which is not out of the question. as much as i was raving about 1&1 when i first signed up with them, they have pulled a slimy, underhanded move that makes me wonder how they stay in business: they pulled a “bait and switch” move where i thought i was signing up for a $10.00 a month deal with no monthly contract, and in reality i was signing up for a $20.00 a month deal with a $50 rebate, and a 6 month contract. furthermore, i’ve discovered a host service which actually charges $7 a month, and has unlimited disk space, bandwidth, and SQL databases. of course 300 GB is a lot, but there’s a big difference between 300 GB and unlimited, especially when they’re actually going to charge me less than 1&1 said they were going to charge me. so i’m going to wait until my 6 month contract is up, and then switch host providers again.
reference
pareidolia is the word that i was trying to remember here.
my name is salamandir and i’m a geek
i’m a geek. i have known it for a while, and there have been several events in my life that have made it sometimes painfully obvious. well, this is one of those events in my life. there is a link on the wikipedia page about cantheism which is in the “External link & sorce” part of the page, the first link is to a “Cantheist website”, which, if you click it, takes you to a pretty green page all about cantheism, with a link at the bottom to Chris Conrad’s web site…
that is all very well and good, but what i discovered this afternoon is that it is on a domain that i own and have control over… and i didn’t know it was there.
not only that, but there are apparently other pages in the same directory, complete with graphics, that i not only didn’t know about, but have not linked on my own site, that i know of, in at least 10 years. the date on the page that has a date is september 15, 2000, which may be around the time they were placed there.
upon further investigation, of course, i discovered that they actually are linked to one of the pages that i haven’t looked at since about 2001. i posted the information, and forgot about it. but internet didn’t, and now, without me having to do anything, a page of information that I make available is a resource on wikipedia.
God is real, despite what the athiests think
i subscribe to this blog, pharyngula, which is written by professor p. z. meyers. he is a prominent evolutionary biologist and athiest whose rantings about “christianity” and the anti-scientific are the primary reasons why i read his stuff, although i freely acknowledge that the only reason i find him amusing and not childishly disgusting is because he’s not making fun of me, and i have no doubt that he would make fun of me if he knew that i exist. nevertheless, his rants about chiropractors and acupuncturists have gotten to me on several occasions, and i was going to ask my acupuncturist about it when i saw him today, but before i even remembered to bring it up, he mentioned something that convinces me even more that amusing as p. z. meyers is, he doesn’t come close to knowing everything, and about “mystical” stuff he is hopelessly clueless and will likely remain so for the rest of his life.
what he brought up is the fact that i have been expanding my right earlobe for the past year and a half (i actually stopped about 6 months ago because my wife doesn’t like it). he’s been studying auricular acupuncture recently, and has noticed that a lot of people self-treat with piercings and modifications without realising it. he then showed me this page from his auricular therapy manual. i may agree with p. z. meyers about the perils of “christianity” and “intelligent design”, but this, if nothing else, convinces me that there are a lot of things that science knows about and dismisses as unproven, that are just as real as things that you can hold in your hand. clarke’s law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
yeah, that sure looks like jeezis to me… 8/
people have apparently been flocking to a church on the island of reunion to see “the face of christ” that was left when an unnamed parishoner got up from their leather-lined pew.
now to me, it looks like bozo the clown on acid. and what’s with those “horns”? it’s as though it were an evil devil of some sort, overshadowing bozo the clown. it sure doesn’t look anything like even the most stylised portraits of jesus that i’ve seen. i know there’s a word for it, but the only word i can currently think of is “idolatry”, which, while appropriate, is not the word i’m thinking of.
squee!
i got the new site up and running! 8)
curious
so i was down at ACT theatre last night. i had a matinee show (which i almost missed because the matinee shows at ACT are at 2:00, not 4:00 like the matinees at the palladium), and i had tickets for the evening show, so i was wandering around between shows and i came across this poster for the new show put on by the Maureen Whiting Dance Company with a vaguely familiar face. i wondered if it might be who i thought it was, but the poster didn’t say. eventually i found a postcard, and sure enough, i found that was, indeed, my son, ezra.
it’s good to know that my progeny is making a name for himself. at the same time, it’s really good to know that, as an artist, he’s getting the start that i should have had, but didn’t, because of my own stuff. my guess is that by the time he’s my age now, he will be a firmly established artist with a national reputation, principally because of the exposute he’s getting now. if i had pursued my dream, instead of going to bellingham and sloughing off for 20 years, i would probably be where he is now.
relief… sort of…
as of 10:30 this morning, i have gotten all of the code for the web site back to where it was before the disaster that happened yesterday, which surprises me a great deal. it’s really strange that a few stray characters can be enough to bring the whole site crashing down – although i’ve begun to perceive that the site is really cobbled together from bits and pieces and held together with chewing gum and bits of string – but it’s even more strange that, despite what i thought originally, i had just enough of just the right files backed up that i was able to resurrect it so easily. two of the three contributions that i thought i was going to have to reinstall were actually already installed. i’ve still got to go back and re-upload a huge shitload of graphics – one at a time, because there’s no other way to do it – considering that my punishment for being as cock-sure as i was, and then i’m going to download the entire site and back that up.
BUGGER!
i may have gotten to feeling a little too cocky about my newly acquired PHP skills, and i may have done something that means that i have to start again from scratch… i probably won’t have to re-feed the database, but as far as i can tell, at this point everything else is totally fucked up – FUBAR as a matter of fact… 8/
and it was all because i ASSUMED that my local backup was identical to my remote site, whereas if i had thought about it for more than a second or so, it would have been obvious that it wasn’t… 8/
and because of the fact that today is the opening performance of the moisture festival, i won’t even get the chance to survey the damage until tomorrow.
bugger, bugger, BUGGER!
ETA (090311 1:53 pm PDT) – it may not be anywhere near as bad as i expected (not surprising), but there’s still some FUMTU stuff, and i have to reinstall a bunch of contributions. the biggest loss at this point appears to be a whole bunch of images, which i, fortunately, do have backed up elsewhere. it’s still going to take me a few days to get everything sorted out, though… 8/
note
this is one of the main reasons why i want to get away from having to use paypal. i’ve heard too many stories like this over the past year or so to ignore it any longer… 8/
it’s worse than you ever imagined…
When they took the fourth amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
and I can say nothing about it.
I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
and I can say nothing about it.
skip
okay, i’m getting really excited now. after what seems like years of not getting anywhere, i’m finally coming down to the last stretch of work on the new site. i’ve still got some products to add to the database, i’ve still got a few things that need tweeking, and i still need to add a whole bunch of content, but i have a fair idea of where that’s coming from and a fairly good idea of how to incorporate it into the site without too much difficulty. there’s still an annoying difficulty, which is that when i put the “ganesha” directory anywhere in the new site, for some reason (including permissions, which i have already checked and they’re all set correctly), the contents of the directory don’t show up, and links to within the “ganesha” directory come back as “403 Forbidden” which is exceedingly strange. furthermore, when i link to where the “ganesha” directory currently lives, there’s no problem, but i get the impression that it can’t stay that way, because when i “move” the domain from the old site to the new site, everything that’s where the old site currently is will be two directories in back of the root directory, and while i can develop that way, i’m about 50% sure that domain-forwarding will make it impossible in real life. i’m not worried, though. things will work out, as always.
ganesha the car got a tune up for the first time in 3 years today. it was close to $400, but the guy took off almost $100 of that because i paid in cash, and because i’m going to make him more business cards. he’s also got a flyer that i’m going to design and (probably) print as well. it was really strange, because i dropped off ganesha the car yesterday and he gave me a ride home in his huge-ass black cadillac with a license plate that says “CHR1ST”. this is the guy who, when i showed up wearing my “it’s just a vegetable” shirt, gave me evil looks all afternoon. i guess he’s willing to look askance at my propensity to sacrifice the Holy Vegetable when it means that he’s going to get kick-ass business cards.
i got a call from "the attorney" the other day, about the notice i received. he said there is nothing to worry about – like i believe that, especially coming from an attorney 8/ – but it was good to hear him say it if nothing else. he said that we’re one to two months out from "the hearing", and he needs to collect updates from me, and various other folks.
& stuff
when you’re unemployed/unemployable/disabled, you get to a point where it doesn’t matter whether it’s the weekend or not. for me it comes down to working and doing what i do anyway, regardless of what day it is, or facing the possibility of even deeper depression because of the fact that i’m not really doing anything to bring income into the house. i’m a wage slave even when i deliberately try to remove myself from the cycle of wages and slavery.
along the same lines, i got a notice from the “Office of Disability Ajudication and Review” about my disability case the other day. a person who has never met me and knows nothing about me is going to decide whether or not i actually am “disabled”. thrill. if they decide that i am, then i’ll get disability retroactively from the time i first had my injury, a portion of which i will then have to fork over to the attorney who has sat there doing nothing for 2 years while the government decided to pull their collective thumb out of their ass and do something about it. if they decide i’m not disabled, then life continues exactly as it has been, except there is no further possibility of my being able to get disability from the government, ever. at this point, it’s still a 50/50 shot, which doesn’t make me feel particularly good about the chances.
meanwhile, i’ve been working hard on feeding the database, and i’ve run out of photos, which means that i’ve got to run another batch of product through the GIMP before going any further. i get the impression that i’m getting fairly close to being finished enough to go live with it, but there’s still darkness at the end of the tunnel. at this point, i don’t know if it’s because there’s still a long way to go, or if it will just be night when i reach the end.
the fremont philharmonic played at a benefit concert for HonkFest West at the Lo-Fi on friday. it went really well, despite having a substitute trumpet player. we had random dance/movement art going on while we played, including one piece that had a woman stripping, which was excellent. she said afterwards that she had only worked to a live band once before, and that we had blown them out of the water and wants to work more with us, which is amazing and exactly what i want to do – and it’s not because she’s a stripper, it’s because strippers always seem to have work, and if there’s money to be made, i wanna be a part of it.
moisture festival coming up. there’s a possibility that the circus contraption band has stolen april 1st from us, but i don’t know for sure.
one of those things that people call “memes” but really aren’t memes at all
comment to this post and i will give you 5 subjects/things i associate you with. then post this in your blog and elaborate on the subjects given.
h/t to xydexx
1) Tina Chopp
wow… this is something that goes back to 1980, when i was in college. i met these guys, we smoked an awful lot lot of pot, took more LSD than all the other people i know combined, and, when that didn’t provide enough excitement to suit us, we created a religion. sadly, one of the guys committed suicide in 1995, and the other one joined the military and when he got out he wasn’t the same (although he’s still a friend of mine). however the religion lives on, thanks to the persistence of internet.
2) snake fondling
my college roommate and i had a pet snake, a rosy boa constrictor named Ebeneezer Squeezer, which we were taking care of for another guy who lived in an environment that wasn’t conducive for snake husbandry (his place didn’t have any heat, and we lived in a headted dormitory). we ended up spending a lot of time, with the assistance of various trendy chemical amusement aids, studying the snake, and this became a central part of our religion.
3) vegetable sacrifice
as i said, we smoked an awful lot of pot. we couldn’t say that smoking pot was a sacrament in our religion, for obvious reasons, so we called it vegetable sacrifice and developed an elaborate ritual around it, most of which didn’t have any illegal bits to it at all. it is still performed from time to time: the last one was held at burning man, last year. it’s really not that difficult to understand, if you think about it.
4) zines
one of the first outreaches that our religion held was the publication of various ‘zines, which were distributed quite widely via such pre-internet phenomena as Factsheet 5 to people i never learned that much about. xydexx was one of those people, who i have gotten to know by way of internet since then. The Church of Tina Chopp published several zines, including The Chopptower and A Snake!, based on distorted articles that we found in jehovah’s witness pamphlets, which were eventually collected together and published as The Books of Tina Chopp, The Visitors, Tina Shoes and various others (which were based on chick tracts), and Tina Magazine, which was bizarre art, recipes, and rants directly from us.
if i recall correctly, xydexx won a bizarre sex contest that Tina Magazine held in one of the later isses. for more details, i think it would be best if you asked him… 😉
5) magic mushrooms
um… yeah. one of my favourite drugs but i haven’t gone out to find any in a long time… 🙁
boojum
happy mahasivaratri last night. i thought i was going to stay up, but i was on the phone or in rehearsal from 9:30 am until 11:30 pm, and i was tired. i did aarati this morning, however. hopefully that will suffice.
i think i found a merchant account/payment gateway that i can afford that will also do away with paypal altogether, which is CardAccept, although i don’t yet know for sure if their gateway will work with my web site. i had a nice conversation with a representative on the phone, who looked at my site and listened to my story and lowered my monthly minimum without my even having to ask, and they’re also the only place that charges for the payment gateway, but doesn’t also have a monthly or annual fee. their charge per transaction is about average: 2.24% + $0.25, but the fact that they don’t charge a setup fee or a monthly fee beyond the gateway has me looking strongly in their direction.
i redid the Hybrid Elephant logo, as well. it’s basically the same as the old logo, but now i have the entire file as vectors, so i can make stickers, banners and other suchlike good stuff.
tee hee
i don’t usually go for this kind of thing too often, but this one came up with such appropriate stuff on the first time that i had to share. i followed the directions at Wikipedia Names Your Band and came up with this for a band name, this for a title, and this for artwork. i haven’t decided what kind of music “CSM Râmnicu S?rat” plays yet, but there are all sorts of possibilities, especially with an album title and artwork like that… 😎
credit cards and firewood
i keep getting both closer and further away at the same time. i suppose the ultimate effect so far is that i’m getting neither closer, nor further away from going live with the new web site. i’ve arbitrarily decided that i want to go live with it around the middle of next month, but that’s an entirely arbitrary deadline and depends a lot on my getting past a couple of what appear to be impossible obstacles, only one of which i have the remote impression that i can fix. the optimist in me says that’s the reason why the business is named after the Remover of Obstacles, but the pessimist in me isn’t willing to concede defeat yet.
the other problem is a seemingly simple problem that gets worse once i actually got around to figuring out how to fix it: the total amount of the order in a customer’s shopping cart is transferred to paypal without any problem. i figured out how to get the shopping cart on my server to figure out the shipping charges without any problem, but when it switches over to the paypal servers, it somehow forgets to add the shipping charges to the shopping cart total, the result being that i would have to request that they fill out shipping as an extra charge again – which would make the customer suspicious, under the best of circumstances, and probably cost me quite a bit in sales, if nothing else.
to add to the problem, in a way that is entirely to my liking, but in a strange sort of way, i’ve actually got another incense order this week, which makes four in the past week (one of which i had to refund because it was made from a page that doesn’t really exist). i haven’t been talking too much about it because i don’t want to jinx anything just yet, but it seems like i’ve gotten far more business this year than i did during the same period of time last year. which means, of course, that the more i sell while i’m still getting the new web site ready, the more i’m going to have to update the new site when it finally goes live, because the amounts of product that i have at that time will be different than it was when i first entered it into the database. the longer time goes on after the database goes live, the less i will have to worry about discrepancies, but it’s likely to be a major headache the first couple of times i run out of product and have to cover my ass.
and that’s not to mention the fact that i’m getting more and more concerned about my relationship with paypal at all. it seems like when i first started doing business with them there wasn’t anywhere near the stigma that there is about doing business with them now. and, to top it all off, there have been things like PayPal Warning dot com, and feedback from people like the lady at the bank about paypal’s reputation suffering, frauds, ripoffs and other wonderful stuff that i don’t want associated with my business.
the obvious solution to the paypal problem mentioned above is to get a “real” merchant account from somewhere, get an SSL certificate – again, from somewhere, and who knows how i’m going to pay for it – and “roll my own”. there are a number of interesting alternatives, including ProPay, which requires that i limit my credit card transactions to $1,000 and has a $35 annual fee, along with the 3.5% + $0.35 per transaction fee, which i think is a bit much for me. there’s also National Merchant, which has no annual fee or signup fee, and has a “discount rate” which is $0.25 + “as low as 1.99%” – but there’s no obvious indication of how high that “discount rate” might go.
there’s also 2Checkout which i haven’t investigated yet, but i get the impression that it’s more of a replacement for paypal than it is a “real” merchant account. there’s also costco merchant credit card processing, which has no obvious way of connecting it to the web (is that what a “payment gateway” is? i’m still learning a lot of terminology for these sorts of things), and i understand that they pull your credit rating as a part of their verification process, which automatically makes your credit rating go down. and there’s also washington mutual, whose representative was way too ready to sign me up, assuring me that their merchant servies were the cheapest, and offering me $250 cash if they couldn’t meet or beat any competitor’s prices. the lady was eager enough to sign me up that i was a little suspicious of her motives. i said i would come back in an hour, but that was yesterday, and i didn’t come back.
instead i talked our neighbour into sharing their hydraulic ram firewood splitter and split the four big rounds of firewood that we’ve still got from last year into about the same amount of firewood that we already had. i figure i’ll go back on monday and actually talk with her about some of the details before i sign up with anyone.
whuff
i started working on the database at 9:30 this morning. around 12:00 i took a break to mail out an incense order that came in about 10:30. around 2:00 or so, i realised that i had better get working on the remaining graphics that have to be added, so i hooked up the scanner and took a whole bunch of photos, and did some design work, figured out some of the remaining things that i have to know before actually going live with this thing. about 5:00 or so i finished the basic design work, and tweakage, and went back to feeding the database. it;s now 9:30 pm, and i just finished
i read a web site the other day for a company that basically sells what i downloaded for free and am configuring myself. they want $50 a month for 100 products, and it has to be on their server. i’ve already uploaded 214 images, and i haven’t even started on the murtis, jewelry, shirts or buttons. i got a good deal. now that i’ve actually done one (and seen how ridiculously easy it is), i just might see if i can get a couple of clients like that myself.
either a very confused person who thinks that i still have a link to primo incense on the old web site just ordered $109 worth of primo incense, or, perhaps something more sinister is going on. i got an order for $109, but no email. i just happened to be looking at the paypal site and i noticed that an order came in an hour ago, but i never got an email for it… i have the primo pages there, but as far as i know, they’re not linked anywhere, and that’s primarily because i haven’t actually carried primo incense for a couple of years. i have a bunch of it. and i’ve been selling it at the FSM, but i don’t have it posted on the current web site, because it’s too confusing. it’s too bad i had to refund their order, because they ordered over $100 worth of incense, and with two exceptions, i was actually able to fill it. the exceptions were that they ordered a dozen primo mini-packs in amber and i only have the mini-packs in yellow rose, and they ordered one 15 gram magnolia, and i would have to make it up, because the only primo magnolia i currently have is a bulk pack of 125 grams.
WOO!
buy Serpentine by Snake Suspenderz at CDBaby, or download the tracks in a variety of formats (including MP3, AAC, FLAC and OGG) from BandCamp. for real… a commercially available CD, that’s not a writable CD-ROM disk, that features a band i play in! woo hoo!
hrmph
i was supposed to go to the FSM today. now that it’s later in the day and it’s raining, i’m kind of glad i didn’t, but i wasn’t so glad when i got up at 5:30 this morning and got about half a block down the road before i discovered that i had a flat tire. i was even more irritated when it cost me $100 to replace the tire, because it had a hole in the side wall. and to make matters worse, the guy said i need new brakes as well. it seems like i just got new brakes recently.
i suppose it’s just as well. i would much rather have a flat tire close to home, so that i can bring the car back home and go back to bed for a couple hours rather than being stuck somewhere. and it’s raining hard enough that it’s just as well that i didn’t make it to the FSM anyway.
I AM STILL A TERRORIST!
hungary glasses sick
i’ve been sick since saturday, which means that i didn’t go to the FSM as planned on sunday. i suppose i could have gone, but getting up at some ungodly hour sunday morning and then driving for an hour and setting up is definitely not what i wanted to do, so i didn’t. i’m still sick, but i’m on the uphill side of it: i feel better than i did yesterday at this time, but i’m not back to 100% yet.
i picked up my new glasses today, and the world is significantly more visible, but only from a distance. i was actually prescribed either bifocals or “reading” glasses, but since bifocals give me a headache and my vision insurance only covers one pair of glasses, i’m going to have to tough it out until i get a spare $500 to spend on “reading” glasses. i’d just buy a pair of cheap reading glasses from the grocery store if they did any good, but they don’t.
i finally got things worked out with the customer and shipped a package of incense to budapest today. it’s the same person that ordered $4.25 worth of incense back in november. i know for certain that i am not the only business to carry the kind of incense they ordered, though, and i’m definitely wondering about how thoroughly they searched for it in hungary before ordering it from me… although i am willing to ship $30 worth of incense to hungary as long as they are willing to send me an extra $25 for shipping.
success!
my new spam protection, installed wednesday has already stopped 5 birdbrained spambots. sweet!
i’m really pleased! i’m not ready to start posting links for sneak previews yet, but the commerce web site is coming along just fine. i finally figured out how to completely eliminate the right hand navigation column, so now the site only has two columns. i changed the HEADER_TITLE to something more appropriate and something that is less likely to give away the fact that i’m using the same ecommerce solution that everyone else is using. i moved the post code to the correct place for american addresses, and changed it to “zip” code, rather than “post” code. i also made the telephone number optional and completely removed the fax number, which was a larger task than it seems, because of the fact that there was no place to modify the fax number, and i had to do a mySQL query to make a place where the fax number could be manipulated. i also removed the manditory birth date and the manditory company from the user registration.
i still have to insert text for the shipping and returns, the privacy notice, and the conditions of use, and i have to replace the text on the index page. i also need to find out what $model['products_name'] has been changed to so that i can put the product name into the <title> of each individual page… and i have to feed the database. i’ve got about half of the incense inventory entered, and i haven’t even started with the murtis or anything else.
i said that this would be ridiculously easy, and i was right. the hardest thing i’ve had to do so far is find strings in PHP files. i’m still a bit confused when the directions say that i should find a certain piece of code on a certain line of a certain file but when i open that file and go to that line, the code that they said should be there is different from what they said it would be, and the result is that it’s going more slowly than i’d like, but i’m certain that it will all get straightened out eventually.
spam?
i got this very strange email today. it said:
you drive like you have sand in your vagina. your car smells like ass and I thougbt my friend crapped her pants but it was just your nasty car. I hate you.
i’m puzzled that anyone would respond that way to me. i’m not surprised that people react to my car, that happens all the time. what puzzles me is the combination of stuff that, if taken separately, would each represent a valid, if totally ludicrous complaint about my car and/or its occupants… but taken as a whole, i just have to sit back and wonder who they are and why they were so upset with me.
i don’t know what it must be like to have sand in ones vagina, but i can’t imagine that it would be very comfortable, and it would probably limit ones mobility quite a bit. i don’t know about anybody else, but i use my car to enhance my mobility, and if they saw me driving, then they would doubtlessly be aware of that. also, i am a very contientious driver: i make mistakes from time to time – i just got a ticket from one of those automated corner-watcher-robot-flashy things in federal way – but most of the time i’m a very safe driver, whether it’s on the street or on the freeway.
and if they saw me driving, then how can they be sure that it was my car that smelled like ass? i have driven through some mighty smelly areas within the past week or so, and the smell was definitely not coming from my car. if they saw the car while it was parked somewhere, i can understand why they might react that way, even though i know for certain that my car doesn’t smell like ass. it also doesn’t smell like what you would expect a car to smell like, and i’m pretty sure that some of the numbskulls around here would not be able to tell the difference. but at the same time, it makes me wonder how they saw me driving poorly enough to know that i drive like i had sand in my vagina?
and to wrap the whole thing up, they say “i hate you” – in case what they said previously hasn’t sunk in yet. well, personally, i would think that if a person was wound up enough to say the other things about me, saying “i hate you” is overstating it a little. it’s as though they thought they weren’t being clear enough about their feelings, and wanted to make sure that i knew what they were talking about. it also makes me think that they were just ranting to rant and picked me because my email form was easily accessible.
i think, and this is all just conjecture, because i’ll never know for certain (the return address on the email response form was [email protected], and i’ve already tried and failed to sent email to that address), but it’s possible that this was written by one of the teenagers that sped past me on the freeway this afternoon, only subsequently to get pulled over by the police. my guess is that they got pulled over for speeding and/or reckless driving because they incredulously and minutely examined all sides of my car – at freeway speeds – before blasting forwards at about 90 miles per hour… whereupon the fuzz, who was in an unmarked car to my right rear, and who i knew was there, flipped on their lights and went after ’em.
i guess feedback is one of the reasons why my feedback form is there, but sometimes i really wonder whether such things are good to have in a place where just anybody can get hold of them… 8/
i couldn’t help it…
here it is! 8)
Serpentine by Snake Suspenderz
take that, michael phelps
if it were only about fred phelps…
hee
i just found out, if you type grep -i mclain /etc/services into a terminal window on mac os x, you’ll get my very old and dear friend fred mclain’s name… apparently his name is on one of the port services that you have if you’re running mac os x, or suse. it doesn’t work if you’re running k/x/ubuntu…
flink
national kazoo day gig last night. it was a real pleasure to play music, but apparently there was some drama towards the end, after all the music had been played and we were packing up and getting out, but apparently not quickly enough to suit the owners of the cafe/theater. i was only partially aware of what was going on. i actually was already packed up and loaded out by the time it became a real drama, and i was outside, so i didn’t even see the drama part of it at all, but apparently sketch was given the bum’s-rush – after having just played a full set, and not having packed up all of his gear or gotten changed or even put on a coat.
we did sell three of our NEW CDs though! it’s so new that it doesn’t have a link anywhere yet… hobbit and thad were up until 3:00 saturday morning folding, gluing and shrink-wrapping the packaging… there will be a CD baby link when i get it. 8)
moe is having problems with the SVBT web site, which is being made infinitely worse by the fact that their host provider has its head so far up its ass that they’d need a team of spelunkers and several days to find it. i’ve been trying to help out, and i actually succeded in backing up the old web site and uploading the stuff that they had to replace it, but now, apparently the database is broken, the PHP experts on staff live in australia, and the web designer is being a 14-carat gold plated prick about the whole thing – but his prick-itude about it may be partially due to the fact that the host provider is being a complete, 24-carat solid gold pile of crap. it would have taken me 10 minutes on my host to do what it took me almost 3 hours to do, manually, one file at a time, on their host. i don’t want to seem like i’m bailing on moe, because if nobody else, i should support her, but at the same time, it’s not my job to fix SVBT’s wonky host provider, and while it is moe’s job, i personally believe that it would be infinitely easier to bail on the host provider and go with some place that actually, you know, provides a usable service….
along a similar line, i got an invoice from drizzle today, and, as i suspected, they’ve charged me again for the screwup that resulted in my account getting deleted and then restated, despite the fact that it never should have been deleted in the first place, which is THEIR FAULT!! and, of course, it’s sunday and they’re not there – i find it somewhat ironic that their automated billing service works on sunday, but nobody else does. it’s not actually going to be “funny” until they have acknowledged that they should not have billed me for something that wasn’t my fault to begin with, which, i suspect, is going to take a while.
linkz
slow progress
i’ve been steadily, if slowly, feeding the database. i haven’t done much with the actual site yet apart from changing the colour and making sure that i can get it to do what i want fairly easily. having not done any of it yet (which is why nobody is getting a sneak peek yet), i get the impression that it’s going to take a lot of work, but ultimately it will be very little to nothing that i haven’t done many times previously, and if everything works the way i think it’s going to, it has the option of being easy, or ridiculously easy. the more i work with this, the better understanding i have of why web sites and databases really should work together, apart from the fact that i know practically nothing about databases. it’s bizarre: i spent 5 years testing databases and database installations at three different companies, and i have installed and populated a bunch of different database software packages more times than i can count, but i never really understood how a database works, or why it is different from, for example, a spreadsheet. i wonder how much longer i can hold out before i really learn what it is that i’ve been doing all these years?
the snake suspenderz CD “Serpentine” is mixed down, we’ve decided on a track order, the cover and artwork has been designed and approved – complete with “What’s that on your floor? It looks like a dead mouse.” which has been a part of every recording that i have ever had my hands in more than just playing a part ever since i was just starting out as a musician. we had a rehearsal today, in preparation for saturday, to make sure that we could actually play the… stuff that we’ve been recording for the past month… which, of course, we could, but sometimes it’s nice to make sure, because you never know.
bleep bloop boing bing…
snake suspenderz is playing at the national kazoo day celebration on saturday. we’ll be playing at the back gate stage at artichoke music on hawthorne in portland. we spent all day today and completed mixdown of all 16 tracks, and we should have a stack of 50 finished, marketable CDs to take with us on saturday.
the fremont philharmonic is in full rehearsal mode for the moisture festival, and i may be playing tuba for the sanca-pators in the moisture festival as well: i heard from a couple of sanca-pators (clayton – who also plays with BSSB and banda gozona – and thaddeus – who also plays with snake suspenderz) that they might need a tuba player, so i wrote to eben, the leader of the sanca-pators – who also plays with BSSB – but i haven’t heard back from him yet. is that incestuous enough for your sensibilities? the fremont phil has got a few other gigs coming up, including a benefit for honk fest west at the end of february. allegedly we’re going to play in honk fest west in june as well, although my recollection is that we were supposed to play last year, as well, and then we cancelled out at the last minute.
moe got home saturday, and i took the doggies with me to the airport, so that they could see that she really was somewhere else and not just hiding from them for the past 2 weeks. they spent almost the entire time she was gone, and they were home, staring at the door and barking occasionally when they imagined that they heard her driving up, as though they were going to cause her to walk through the front door by sheer force of their doggie wills. paddy, our oldest dog now that allie is gone (she’s 11) lost 5% of her body weight during the time moe was gone. she ate all of her food, and i didn’t notice her acting strangely or anything, but moe said she looked thin, so she took her to the clinic yesterday. she doesn’t appear unhealty, but moe is extra careful with paddy, because they are as close to soul mates as a person and a dog can be.
banda gozona played at the central area senior center in a benefit for cascade peoples’ center last saturday, after moe got home. it was the standard oaxacan shindig, which meant a lot of food, a lot of music, a lot of people speaking spanish, and a lot of chaotic disorganisation. i’m beginning to start to get the hang of what we are playing most of the time. it’s only taken me two years of playing with the group. it helps that i’m not the new guy any longer.
also…
i upgraded to WordPress 2.7 last night, and it’s still pretty shiny and new, but i’ll see what i can do about mucking things up soon enough. at the moment, i wonder about the header graphic, which used to have a pretty purplish gradient in it, but now, from what i can see, is a glaring emergency orange-ish.
ETA: it’s not orange any more, but apparently the upgrade broke my ability to make the header more than one colour. presumably there will be a fix for it eventually, but in the mean time, i changed it to all purple instead of all orange… easier on the eyes…
spam
somebody sent me 15,000 17,000 20,000 spam messages this morning between 2:30 am and 8:30 10:30 12:00 pm. i am NOT happy! not happy at all! >8/
moisture madness &c.
slow but steady progress on the web site. i’ve discovered Simple Template System, which is a method of creating templates with keywords instead of actual code. one way or the other, it’ll give me some added control over the site that i would have to learn a lot of coding stuff before i’d be able to do any other way. it seems really odd that i was on top of the game in terms of web coding 10 years ago, and now i would have to learn several new coding languages before i would be anywhere close to as competent these days. of course, back then i didn’t have my own business, and i wasn’t doing the work i had always dreamed of doing, so i guess i don’t feel too bad about not being as knowledgable as i once was.
moisture festival is upon us again, and there’s as much chaos and disorganised speculation about how things are actually going to get done as i have ever seen for this early in the process. at this point it appears that we have been tapped for 13 performances, two of which are “burlesque” and one is the panto. alledgedly the plan is to keep stringing them along because, alledgedly, the plan is to eventually have the moisture festival in multiple venues, and then we will have our own venue and do all of the shows for that venue, but that’s in the future. this is now, and the fact that we’ve got 12 performances that aren’t panto, compared with the zebra kings getting 16 performances, and most of the “burlesque” performances (the “variete” performances are pretty much evenly split between the fremont philharmonic, the zebra kings, the sancapators, and the other bands that are involved). personally, i feel as though it is a known fact that RB is not the best person to be figuring out who does what in which shows, and it’s already showing itself to be a bad decision that RB is in charge, once again.
the 31st, snake suspenderz is going to portland for the national kazoo day celebration. we’re getting together some time this week to have a listening/mixing party, where we also intend to finalise the track order. i’ve been on several recordings in the past, but this one is exciting in a way that those other ones weren’t so much: there’s a good chance that i’ll actually get paid for this recording! 8)
i went out and took a look at loudspeakers for my car. first i had to learn a bit of terminology: there’s a difference between loudspeakers and a public address system (or a PA), and further, there’s a difference between a PA system and indoor/outdoor waterproof stereo speakers. i get the impression that any way i want to do this, i’m also going to have to upgrade the stereo in my car, which won’t hurt my feelings too much, but it’s an extra, added $150 or so, depending on where i actually buy it from. at this point, i think what i’m going to do is buy my stereo upgrade from car toys, because they have a deal where any stereo system over $100 that you buy from them is eligible for free installation, and free is always good. then i have to make the decision whether i want a (mono) PA speaker – which i can get for $35 or so – or whether i want to splurge for the indoor/outdoor waterproof stereo speakers, which cost more and likely have to be built into enclosures which also cost more, but will sound a great deal better than mono.
obama has only been president for two days, so i don’t want to get all freaked out about what a good job he’s doing, but he’s already doing things like shutting down gitmo and putting all of bush’s “midnight regulations” on hold before they can be enacted. he hasn’t come out and said that bush should stand trial for criminal malfeasance, but it’s a step in the right correct direction, if nothing else.
moosehead – a great beer and a novel experience for the moose.
??? ????????? ???
we finished recording the rhythmn tracks for the CD today. all that’s left are a few vocal, solo and percussion tracks, and mixdown, and it will be a finished product! also it was farewell to eight years of political BUllSHit and the beginning of an entirely different kind of political bullshit, which will be equally opressive, but right now i’m so fucking tired of bush that anything else will be a pleasant and refreshing change for a short while. i got my order from the theosophical society bookstore, and i made an order from om imports for incense, incense burners and murtis. also, i’m going to start pricing loudspeaker systems for Ganesha The Car. i still have to work on rebuilding the web site, and feeding the database, both of which i have done shockingly little in the past week. banda gozona rehearsal on thursday, and a gig on saturday evening, after moe gets home.
diary of a tired agarbatthiwallah
FSM today. it was actually a pretty good day. it started out at 5:30 with dog breakfasts in the car, but i discovered that the FSM offers a $5 discount for early membership renewal, and they were offering 2-for-1-for-$30 spaces – to encourage vendors to brave the cold, damp, limited-daylight early-january freeze – even though i could only use one space anyway, instead of making -$5, i actually came out ahead $10 today (which means that i made $75, if my convoluted math is confusing you). not only that but i had the priveledge of explaining the real meaning of the swastika to three different people, i had one guy from tibet express utter amazement when i told him that despite the fact that i know an awful lot about it, i have never actually been to india, i learned teegan’s name (finally), and i gave her some incense, and i brought tears of joy to a person’s eyes when i said that, in my opinion, Jesus and Ganesha are the same thing. i took the doggies with me, and they went for a walk up and down the canal after the market was over, and they’re asleep(!) at this point. i’m probably going to feed the cats, grab a bite (and not much more than that) and go to bed myself… i forgot how dreadfully early 5:30 in the morning is. 8P
all in all, i would say that it was an entirely positive and uplifting day. i need more days like this.
yem
so i prepared the vehicle for going to the FSM tomorrow. i figured that i would put the dogs’ food in their kennels in the car, to save time – that way all i’ll have to do is get up and let the dogs out, and while they’re outside i can get dressed and then all i have to do is put them in the car and i’m off… which seems reasonable, since i’m going to have to get up at 5:30, and recently (since moe has been gone) i have been sleeping until 10:00 or so (which is offset by going to bed between 2:00 and 4:00). but the doggies were confused when i started doing the stuff that i normally do right after i get up (i.e. getting food ready for dogs), and they only just settled down. i put in 6 boxes of incense and 2 boxes of murtis, along with all of my display gear and my canopy and i can still see out the back window, even with three dog kennels as well. i’ve been wanting to get a roof-rack for Ganesha The Car, but i want one that won’t damage or get in the way of the artwork that’s already there. i carry everything inside, with just space for me to drive when i’m driving Ganesha, and there’s no room for doggies, but this is an entirely different beast. if it didn’t mean creating an entirely new art car, i would think really strongly about a minivan – and, for that matter, if it weren’t for the economy and gas prices, i’d think about it because of the fact that it meant creating an entirely new art car. i’ve also been thinking about getting a loudspeaker for Ganesha, which i can hook up to my music player, so that i can broadcast hindu chants outside my car for shows and parades and suchlike. i’ve actually got enough money that i can realistically start thinking about actually doing something like that fairly soon.
wow…
i was just thinking about it today, and in terms of relationships, i am fairly close to some really famous people. i had breakfast with R. Buckminster Fuller when i was in high school (and he is still one of the people whom i aspire to be like), and Joseph P. Faddlefum, who was on the edge of the circle that timothy leary was in the center of, was my first college advisor and still remains a good friend, but i also know, for example, two people who know the president-elect in some way or another: one of my friends went to occidental college, and was in several discussion groups with him, and the other got a personal, printed invitation to the inauguration (although, at this point, i don’t know why). i’ve rubbed shoulders with people like artis the spoonman, baby gramps, hacki (the famous german clown), fyodor karamazov, and rev. chumleigh, although i get the impression that the first two would probably not remember my name if it came right down to it (even though i’ve appeared on the same stage, at the same time as both of them for 5 years in a row, now). and that’s not to mention the fact that my wife is the “Nuclear FOB” (which stands for “Friends Of the Bobs”), having been a fan for about 20 years or so, and the fact that i personally know matthew bob and amy bob. i know St. Fred, the inventor (among other things) of the exploder control that took microsoft by surprise when they had just released their supposedly “more secure” platform for browser plugins (which was really OLE in a shiny new package), and i worked for a couple of years with the son of Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.
i’m not that famous, and i’m not sure i want to be, but i guess i’m just as happy being in the background of all these famous people, even if nobody else notices.
in other news, i’ve decided to move my personal web site to it’s own domain (and away from drizzle), so i’ve registered puggry duckling dot com (which isn’t there yet). i’ll move my pages over to there and place a server-push to the new domain… probably tomorrow. who knows how long the server-push is going to remain there, considering that drizzle updates their DNS tables manually whenever they feel like it… 8/
i am a fucking terrorist, damn it!
god damn it, it’s a fucking good thing i don’t live in south carolina, otherwise i’d be guilty of a fucking felony and face a fine of fucking five thousand dollars… i wonder what shit-for-brains asshole came up with that idea, and if they’ve ever read the fucking bill of rights before they accepted their fucking job… >8/
diary of a tired geek
i had another session with the annoying/amusing client i have spoken of previously today. his printer wouldn’t work, and his flash plugin wouldn’t work – which meant that he can’t view the pornographic videos he watches all the time – and he wanted me to make sure that his operating system hadn’t “gotten tired” of alerting him to things… oh, and when a javascript popup window that said his computer is infected with a virus, and wouldn’t go away, he wanted me to reassure him that someone wasn’t watching what he was doing through his computer screen. he’s really annoying because i put things as simply as possible in order to help him understand, and then, when i begin to think he’s getting the idea, he comes out of left field with things like “i used to have a daily devotional icon on my computer [when it was running windows], and before you installed the new OS, i put it on my flash drive, but now it doesn’t work. can i get it to work?” and i have to begin again and explain that icons are not always the same things as programs, and just because you are able to transfer an icon from one computer to another (or, in this case, from one operating system to another), it doesn’t always take the program. sometimes the icon is just a pointer to the program, and even if it actually is the program, this does not automatically mean that it will work there. whereupon he says “well is it possible to get a daily devotional icon that does work?”… 8/ i know nothing about what this guy actually does on his computer, other than research spasticity (he actually had me set up a wikipedia account for him, because he wants to contribute), watch his “daily devotional” program, whatever that is, and view tons of pornographic videos, which he has me clear out of his cache once in a while. he’s really earnest in wanting to know more, and he appears to be fairly bright in spite of having a brain injury, but he doesn’t seem to get it enough that i wonder about him sometimes.
i also nailed up some chainlink fence material to the neighbours’ fence posts. it wasn’t a moment too soon. as i was nailing up the fence material, i heard an ominous crack and the fence gave way. it didn’t actually fall down, but now the only thing that’s holding it up is gravity and friction. my guess is that eventually there will be enough moss growth that the friction will give way and the entire fence will come down.
yesterday we had another recording session with snake suspenderz, which resulted in three tracks that are in the final stages of finishing, and one track that needs a bit more work (hobbit and thaddeus are getting together tomorrow to finish it up). when that’s done, we have one more session, and then a CD release party, or something like that. National Kazoo Day is on the 31st, and snake suspenderz is going to portland for that. there’s also rumours that we have a potential gig in eugene. among the new tracks that we recorded are a song called Serpentine, by howlin’ hobbit, and the standard Don’t Get Around Much Any More, by Duke Ellington.
monday i spent all day feeding my database and learning about CSS selectors and which bits of PHP to change in my new osCommerce installation. i got a whole bunch of the database finished, and got the site more or less into the shape that it’s going to have when it’s complete, but i still have a lot of mismatched headers, things that are showing up on one page but not on the others, or vice versa, bright colours (i’ve been changing things to bright colours so that i can see when things change more easily), and incomplete content to deal with. osCommerce is made for people who are a lot less web-savvy than i am, so figuring things out shouldn’t be too difficult. i think that, for most people, the most daunting part of osCommerce is the piles of PHP/HTML/CSS pages that they potentially have to edit, but it doesn’t bother me at all. actually, i’m a lot more concerned about the database, because i’m still not completely sure about the mechanics of the interaction between the database and the website. how much of it is database manipulation of PHP code, and how much of it is actually due to the effect that the PHP itself is having on the pages i see is still a complete mystery.
another deposit recently and my bank account is over $500 for the first time since i started the business – seven years ago! i’ve noticed that for the past 5 years or so, my bank statement for january is approximately twice what it was the year before, and it’s very definitely the case this year. in fact, it’s almost 3 times what it was last year. despite what the DVR drone said, i think i’m doing something right, and i’m really looking forward to next year as well.
i actually think i’m going to survive monique’s being gone without much difficulty, but i’m not so sure about the dogs. magick and zorah heard me drive up in the minivan today (which is usually moe’s car), and they lost it, and spent a good hour and a half staring at the door and barking trying to get moe to walk through it by sheer force of their doggie wills. it would have been a lot more amusing if i didn’t jerk violently (a lingering side effect of my brain injury) when they bark.
meanwhile, here’s what i have been reading about:
UCL records the sound of jelly wobbling – the university college in london has succeded in recording the sound of jelly wobbling in a soundproof recording chamber. i definitely went to the wrong school.
a little closer to home, YouTube video of man blasting couch with rifle shown at weapons trial – let’s see if i’ve got this straight: the guy thought he would celebrate the fact that he had this illegal firearm, and silencer, without a permit or anything, by filming himself without disguise or attempt to cover evidence that they caught him with, shooting up a couch close to his home, and then post it on youtube… if i were going to film myself identifiably using an illegal firearm to do something, i would be sure that the thing i filmed would get me arrested on it’s own merits, whether i filmed it or not. the fact that this guy thought he could take a film of him doing something illegal and post it on youtube is bad enough, but the fact that he apparently didn’t think about the fact that it might be a factor in getting him caught proves that this guy is stupider than most.
to do
i gotta put up chainlink along the back fence, because the neighbour’s fence is falling down. currently it’s got holes big enough for even the largest dog to get out and go exploring… 8/
okay, the polish is starting to wear…
i still really like my new host provider, but not as much as i did previously. in order to install AWStats, i have to know the location of httpd.conf, but because of the fact that i purchased a “shared hosting” package, it’s not where the awstats configurator expects it to be… so i call up tech support and ask them where it is, and they say that because of the fact that i don’t have an actual host server (which costs $100 a month) i don’t have the priveledge of adding lines to the configuration file. i say i’m not going to add lines to the file, i just need to know where it is, but they won’t even tell me where the file is located…
hrmph!
so, i guess i’m going to have to be satisfied with the only semi-awesome web stats that are provided… 8/
here we go…
moe left for florida today. she’ll be back in two weeks. whee… 8/
meanwhile, i think i’ve got enough to keep me busy: i’ve got to build a web site and populate a database. i’ve been going back and forth with liz since drizzle FUMTUed hybrid elephant, and there is a bit of worry about whether or not the drizzle affliction has effected sedentarysousa.com. liz also mentioned that she’d like to get the kosher red-hots web site on my host as well. i’m not sure how much, if any web design work will go into that one, but as far as i’m concerned, the less i have to do the better. i’m also thinking about installing AWStats on hybridelephant, because as awesome as my new host is, they don’t have the stats the way i’d like them to be, and AWStats does it for me.
then i’ve got more recording sessions with snake suspenderz. the most recent one generated 3 new tracks, as did the previous three as well, and if everything goes according to the non-existent plan we have set up, the one on tuesday will generate at least 3, and possibly 4 more. then there’s also the fremont philharmonic, which is starting rehearsals for a yet-to-be-determined if we do it CD, plus we’ve got an offer to perform cinderella again at the end of march, and we’ve got the moisture festival coming up, which we have to start rehearsing for pretty soon… like next week…
oh, yeah… i’m also responsible for three doggies who haven’t realised that moe won’t be home tonight like usual. hopefully they won’t turn into the obnoxious pests that they have a tendency to be sometimes. i’m planning on going to the fremont sunday market next week if the weather looks good, and i’m taking the dogs with me so that they don’t have to stay home alone for 12 to 14 hours. because moe’s not here, i’m planning on taking her car, which is a minivan and much more suited to carrying a huge crapload of stuff, and 3 dogs in relative comfort.
now, all i gotta do is convince myself that two weeks will go by a lot quicker than it seems like now. i hope moe has fun, and i’m glad that she’s going to this conference, because it’s good exposure for her, and she’ll build professional credibility by being seen there (if nothing else), but i can’t wait until she gets home.
interesting/amusing/annoying
so in restoring the Church of Tina, i discovered that, for some (obvious now, but then it was a) mysterious reason, the entire site worked the way it was supposed to, except for this page, which is part of the church of tina’s elaborate disclaimer. instead of getting the page, i was getting a “403 – Forbidden” error (similar to the much more common “404 – File Not Found” error, which you have undoubtedly seen before). i didn’t remember it being forbidden before, and so i renamed the file, and re-uploaded it in an attempt to straighten out the problem, but it was still showing up as forbidden. then i looked at the page with my linux terminal and discovered that the reason why it wasn’t working was because the permissions had been reset to 600 – which means the owner of the file (presumably me) can read and modify the file, but if you’re not me, then you can’t even see the file. when i reset the permissions to 644 (i can modify the file, and everyone else can read it), it reappeared on the web site like magic – no more 403 error!
except for the fact that I would not have reset the permissions so that nobody could see it, and the only people who administrative permissions on the file (which would supercede my permissions) are the host providers – drizzle!
i don’t know this for sure, and i can guarantee that if they did do something strange like change the permissions on the file without telling me, that they wouldn’t admit to it, but i would bet that the subject of the file in question contacted drizzle and complained, and drizzle arbitrarily changed the permissions on the file in order to get her to shut up and go away.
they were sneaky enough to not just delete the file (because then i would know that they had been up to no good), but they did something to the file that wouldn’t be perceived by someone who is using windoesn’t, and only perceived by someone using mac or *ix by looking at it with the terminal, which nobody uses these days…
goddamn drizzle anyway… i can’t wait to get another ISP… 8P
DRIZZLE!!!!
here is yet another reason why drizzle.com is not going to be my ISP much longer: they assumed that when i requested a change of host providers for hybridelephant.com, they automatically assumed that it also meant cancelling my internet service – which was wrong, and i took care of it last week. what i didn’t realise is that they also cancelled The Church of Tina Chopp, resulting in an interruption of service for several days. it’s on its way to being fixed at this point (i still have to wait the requisite 24 to 48 hours for the DNS changes to propagate), but that is yet another reason to get away from them as quickly as possible.
i should have listened more carefully when i was told last march that drizzle was incompetent. now it’s come back to bite me in the ass… 8/
flurb
moe goes to florida for two weeks for her annual conference starting sunday, which means that i’ve got two weeks of taking care of three dogs on my own while she’s in key west playing with dolphins and manatees. it will probably be okay except for the fact that i’m planning on going to the fremont sunday market next week, and i’ll probably have to take the doggies with me so that they don’t have to spend all day in their kennels with no bathroom breaks. i’m actually looking forward to taking the little dog – zorah the cute – to FSM because i get the impression that she will be the cause of a significant boost in my sales.
i saw ezra today, and talked with him about setting up a domain or two for him. he wants a “legitimate” web site and one that is “not so legitimate” and he wants control over both of them, but not any immediately visible connection between the two. i said that it would be not too difficult, and now have the task of researching domain names, while his job is to 1) get a new computer to replace his broken one, and 2) to come up with content so that once the domain name(s) are registered, they can be populated without me having to do much other than the technical end of things.
i got a whole pile of incense samples from sugandha prabhu, but none of them are incenses that i want to carry, and part of the reason is because there’s no guarantee that i will be able to get more if sugandha prabhu disappears, which is a probability that i have been prepared for, for a couple of years now. sugandha prabhu inevitably comes up with the most outstanding incenses available anywhere (and also guides me towards the incense that nobody else carries) but he’s also one of my most flaky suppliers, and i don’t know from one day to the next whether or not i’m going to be able to get more from him. i currently have more than ½ a kilo of majmua durbar, which is a tremendously popular incense, that is apparently not going to be delivered because they stopped making it without telling anyone, despite the fact that sugandha prabhu sent me a little bit less than ½ a kilo just a little bit more than a month ago with the promise that the rest of the kilo would be “coming soon”… if it weren’t for the fact that i now have two or three months worth of free incense (i can’t sell the samples he sends), i would be a bit more perturbed than i am with sugandha prabhu currently.
i found the place where the graphics are stored for my new osCommerce web site, but it’s going to take me a while to sort things out and get everything working. it’s probably going to be at least a month or so before i have a tentative web site that is worth viewing, so don’t expect me to post links to it just yet.
this is the beginning
so, i took the plunge and installed osCommerce, and got it running and configured today. it still has all of the default information and sample data, but its going to be ridiculously easy to build a working database. it’s going to be a little more difficult to figure out where the default graphics are (which say “osCommerce” and not “Hybrid Elephant”) and change ’em, but it’s not beyond doing, and i’ve got it installed in a place where i can work on it and get it looking like i want, and then move it into the right place with a minimum of disruption. as far as the stuff i don’t know, i have the php manual in an easily accessible format, and there are numerous osCommerce tutorials out there, so i don’t think it’s going to be that difficult to make it look the way i want as well. wish me luck…
oh yeah, that’s right…
i found out why the guy from england doesn’t mind paying the extra shipping to get incense from me:
HE CAN’T GET IT ANYWHERE ELSE!!
even in the United Kingdom, the only place he’s been able to find this particular incense is Hybrid Elephant.
under the circumstances, how can i refuse?
see? i told you so!
The Russian Bear Slashes a Social Network – anybody looking for a place to run a blog? i’ve got web space and blogging software available…
what?
i got the first incense order of 2009 today, but i ended up refunding it, because it was for $18 worth of incense and they wanted it shipped to great britain, which would add an extra $35 to the cost, and i can’t see receiving a package that is worth more than its contents making someone very happy. people keep doing this: ordering a relatively small amount of incense and then asking me to ship it to obscure places like brazil, turkey or england. don’t get me wrong, i’m happy that customers from that far away are coming to me for incense and stuff, but there has got to be some way of letting such people know that the shipping costs are going to bite them in the ass…
8/
i just got email from the guy. apparently he is fine with the extra cost (which i can’t figure out, but under these circumstances, i won’t argue with him), but now he’s got to resubmit his order… wonderful.
i’m old… 8/
tomorrow is my son’s twenty-sixth birthday.
Ganesha!
our neighbour’s house
our neighbour has a house that doesn’t just twinkle or sparkle, it flashes obnoxiously. if it were any worse, you could hear it. if anyone is susceptible to epilepsy, don’t view this video.
view it here if the embed doesn’t work.
tweebit
okay, now that the “holiday” season is passed, i’ve got a lot of things to catch up with. i’ve got to file my annual excise tax, which means going through all of my invoices and receipts from last year, and filling out some web-form which i inevitably have to call for help to complete because of some technical screw up or another. i also have to get started on re-doing the hybrid elephant web site, which means, among other things, i’m going to deliberately ignore the fact that it’s been more than a month since i updated the counters on the pages with the most hits this month, because, hopefully, by next month they will be replaced or moved anyway. i’m also going to have to call ian to talk with him about the web site in general.
snake suspenderz is working on it’s new CD with me as the tuba player. we’ve got another recording session on wednesday, and another two or three after that, at some yet-to-be-determined time. it’s projected for release sometime in january, though, so it won’t be too long. i’m also going to push hard this time for the fremont philharmonic to record a CD – especially since i now actually know someone who does that sort of thing.
woo… 8/
happy new…
whatever
new years’ rant
okay, over at Unreasonable Faith there’s a discussion going on which started out with the guy giving believers “your chance to convince us atheists there is a God. Pitch your best case for why we should believe in a deity”. i normally agree with atheists a lot more than i do with “christians”, but i couldn’t resist, especially since mine is a somewhat unique position (which i will explain more fully in a minute) to which few, if any, other people subscribe – which is just fine with me.
although, as i said, i tend to agree with athiests a lot more than i do with most “believers”, ultimately, i am a “believer” myself, and everything that i have experienced to this day only drives home to me that my way of thinking is the correct one for me, if for no other person. i know that a God exists, and that He (for lack of a better term) has three defining characteristics: the God that i worship is infinite, unchanging and eternal. ultimately, the God in Whom i beleve can be described as existing beyond “normal logic” because of the fact that in order to meet the criteria of being infinite, unchanging and eternal, God would have to be able to do what seem to us like impossible things, for example being in multiple places at the same time, or being both right and wrong, or both black and white, at the same time, without having to worry about whether or not one thing conflicts with the other. if what you call “god” is unable to exhibit these three qualities then, to me you are not referring to the God that i know to exist.
i realise that this puts me in the category of “mystics” (some might say “crazy people”, i’ll deal with them in a minute) who say that God exists beyond normal understanding, and without some sort of “mystical experience” you’ll never understand what i am talking about, but i’m not the only one to believe this way, and from what i’ve been able to see, the ones who believed the way i do had significant hardships, but were a great deal happier overall than people who went along with the herd, whether athiest or “christian”.
i look at my life as depicted in this story, called When the Waters Changed
Once upon a time, Khidr, the Teacher of Moses, called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially horded, would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water which, when consumed, would drive men mad.
Only one man listened to the meaning of this advice. He collected water and went to a secure place where he stored it, and waited for the water to change its character.
On the appointed date, the streams stopped running, the wells went dry, and the man who had listened, seeing this happening, went to his retreat and drank his preserved water.
When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man descended among the other sons of men. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they seemed to have no memory of having changed, or being warned that it would happen. When he tried to talk to them, he realised that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or compassion, not understanding.
At first he drank none of the new water, but went back to his concealment, to draw on his supplies, every day. Finally, however, he took the decision to drink the new water because he could not bear the loneliness of living, behaving and thinking in a different way from everyone else. He drank the new water, and became like the rest. Then he forgot all about his own store of special water, and his fellows began to look upon him as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity.
eventually, i’ll run out of my special store of water, and be forced to drink the water everyone else is drinking. then, presumably, i will give up thinking like a crazy person and start thinking like everyone else.
if that happens, please kill me.
happy new year.
happy VEWPRF
in the past, i’ve tried to go along with whatever holiday might be celebrated around me whether i “believed in it” or not, however in the past few years it’s gotten to the point where i’ve taken a long, hard look at the traditions, the history, and the meaning of several Vague Early Winter Possibly Religious Festivals (VEWPRFs) and tried as much as possible to separate myself from them, primarily because of the fact that i don’t “believe in them” in any conventional sense, and to me, the people that really do believe in them, particularly “christians” really make me wonder about the future of the human race. i’ve had the chance to go “caroling” with a bunch of other brass players, and while i appreciate the music very much, and would really like to get together with a bunch of people who all appreciate the music, and can play it well, i decided not to go – and not entirely because of the fact that “the weather outside was frightful” (although that was about ⅔ of the reason). the weather is also the reason we won’t be spending xmas (one of the VEWPRFs i was talking about) with the inlaws in portland this year – although we probably will be spending new years day with them (’cause i have the gig where i’m paid the most amount of money i have ever been paid for something EVER on new years eve – i’m being paid $100 an hour for an hour’s performance with snake suspenderz), and while it won’t exactly be the same as xmas with them, it will still very likely have the same history and meaning. with my in-laws particularly, i have learned that it’s a lot easier if i keep my mouth shut, because, if nothing else, they give good presents and don’t expect an awful lot other than to see that my wife is healthy and happy, which she seems to be taking care of all by herself.
and when you look at xmas, from it’s beginnings all the way to today, you discover that it’s basically one lie after another with no apologies or attempts to hide them: jesus, if he ever even really existed, was more than likely born in the spring, and the fact that his birthday is celebrated when it is, is primarily because of the fact that the “christian” church took over pagan solstice celebrations of one kind or another, and in the process of making it basically illegal to have any other kind of celebration, at the same time it started pushing it’s own version of VEWPRF as a “legal substitute” so that the (formerly) pagan worshippers – who still continue to this day – wouldn’t rise up and overthrow their oppressors. and at this late date, there’s less of “jesus’ birth” and more commercialism and “santa claus”, to the point where jesus – the supposed “reason for the season” (which, in reality, can more be attributed to axial tilt than the birth of a supposed “saviour”) – is almost forgotten, even by supposed “christians” for whom this should be a time to remember their saviour. and that brings up the discussion: “saved from what?” saved from sin? who created sin? if it was God, then didn’t he have some reason for creating it? shouldn’t He expect us to sin, if He created it to begin with? if it wasn’t, then why do we have to be saved from it? how is jesus any more likely to save me than norm, down the street, or myself, for that matter? if it weren’t for the fact that i have experienced “the indwelling of the Holy Spirit” (which is nothing at all like the “christian” people would have you believe), i would deny that such a thing exists, simply because of the fact that the way the “christians” describe it is totally absurd. if it weren’t forced on them when they were children and unable to see how the adults were lying to them, “christianity” would have completely vanished ages ago.
and as far as my experience of the “indwelling of the Holy Spirit”, which happened many years ago (although it continues to this day), i am aware of the fact that it’s such a profound, personal experience, that any attempt i make to describe what it was like will sound equally absurd. i’m okay with that, and don’t blame you if you think i’m crazy, but like i said, it was so much different from what the “christians” say that comparing the two is a difficult thing. my impression is that “christians” only have about a quarter of the story, and instead of being inspired to learn about the ever expansive THING that they call God, they’ve decided that that’s all you ever need, and are afraid of anything that stretches beyond their comfort zone.
so, along with everything else, my views about both Christmas and xmas (similar to the difference between Christians and “christians”, for those of you who are keeping score) are skewed enough that celebrating it myself is kind of out of the question, despite my general tendency to celebrate whatever holiday “most of us” are celebrating. so you’ll pardon me while i wish everyone a happy VEWPRF and go off and hide somewhere until february so i don’t have to listen to another round of “Jingle Bell Rock”. 8/
SNOWPOCALYPSE! OMG! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!1!
cinderella finished its second week of performances amid more snow than i’ve seen around here for a long time. it started snowing on thursday and finally quit yesterday, but there’s a prediction that it’s going to start up again tomorrow… i took the train from tacoma to seattle saturday (quite an enjoyable trip, by the way) and stayed at heather and stuart’s place saturday night. my windows computer is broken (again) – it appears to be the same sort of thing that it was the last time, in that it appears to be a power supply issue, so i’m hoping that i can replace the power cord (again) and everything will be back to normal, but i’m not holding my breath. i took my mac laptop with me on saturday and recorded both shows and 5 potential demos for the fremont phil, which i have since burned to a DVD (although i didn’t have to, because even with several gigs of space taken up by the recordings, i still had more than 120 gigs of free space left!!!). sunday i did another show, without a trumpet player, because our regular trumpet player, teacher ted, thought he was going to fly out early sunday morning (fat chance – all flights out of sea-tac were cancelled due to the snowpocalypse), and our substitute trumpet player, a high school student named shimpuku, was stuck north of lake washington. after the show, i got a ride home from macque and norma, who have a four-wheel-drive jeep with chains, which is a good thing, because the roads were almost totally impassable due to seattle’s having this weird thing about encouraging compact snow and ice rather than salting the roads. the national weather service prediction is for precipitation, most probably snow, at least 50% (and as much as 80%) of the time until thursday, and has predicted snow for 8 out of the past 10 days. we had around a foot and a half of snow, and had to dig the car out, and then dig the driveway out before we could go anywhere yesterday. when we finally got dug out, we went to buy tire chains for moe’s car, and on the way discovered that the car was overheating – or so we thought, it was actually the temperature gauge that died – not the thermostat, the temperature gauge in the instrument panel, fortunately, because if it had been the thermostat it would have cost several hundred dollars to fix, but because of the fact that it’s in the instrument panel, it’s actually safe to drive the car even though the temperature is wonky. of course, the first thing that happened this morning is that moe decided that it wasn’t snowing right then, so she would try to go in to work, and on the way she drove over something that broke the chains, so she had to stop the car in the middle of highway 99 (thank gawd she wasn’t on the freeway) and take them off, leaving her with a big, empty minivan with no traction, somewhere between home and mercer island at 6:30 in the morning.
anyway, the cinderella performances went amazingly well despite sunday’s lack of a trumpet player, and saturday evening, when we weren’t expecting anybody to show up, we actually had almost a full house, including a whole pile of noisy kids which was almost exactly like OCF. Fremont Philharmonic dot com is now in existence, but it doesn’t have much there at this point except for stuff that only applies to members of the fremont phil. also i’m talking with macque and bfly about consolidating all of the fremonstor theatrical organisations on one host.
snoow
cinderella starts it’s second week of performances tonight, but i’m not sure how many people are going to be there, because it snowed yesterday and we still have six inches of snow all over everything. moe took two hours to get home from work yesterday – she actually took 4½ hours to get to work (it normally takes her just under an hour, depending on traffic) – and she couldn’t get the car up the hill, so she parked at norm’s and hiked in. i’m not sure whether i want to drive or take a taxi. if i take a taxi, i’m going to have to have assurance that i’ll be paid back for it, because my impression is that the taxi fare is going to be at least $75 for a one way trip. but it’s only 10:00, so i’m going to wait until 1:00 or so before i make a decision.
throw a shoe in solidarity!
THANK YOU FOR THROWING YOUR SHOE
i would put a link to my contribution, but the URI keeps changing… 8/
Muntather al-Zeidi speaks for me!
- Donate a pair of shoes to the local charity of your choice.
- Send Bush a postcard, stating, “A pair of shoes has been donated to the needy in your name. This is a farewell kiss from the American people, you dog.” The address to write to is:
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500 - Sign the petition to have Muntather al-Zeidi released from custody!
a lot of new stuff
cinderella finished its first week of performances. there was a rumour that we were getting reviewed by the seattle times saturday night, but it snowed, and the reviewer didn’t pick up the tickets he called and asked for. of course that means either that he didn’t come, or he did come but didn’t want to alert us to his presence, which makes me wonder why he called and requested comps in the first place. apart from that, the performances are going reasonably well, no forgotten scenes, missing actors or long dead spaces. there have been a few missed cues and short dead spaces, but we haven’t actually performed this show since july, and we’ve got two more weeks of performances. unlike previous shows, i’m pretty sure we’re going to get it right several performances before we close.
snake suspenderz is supposed to be recording this week… snake suspenderz is actually supposed to be recording today, but we weren’t supposed to start until 1:00, and i’ve got to leave by 4:00 to pick up moe so that we can go to The Bobs show this evening, and besides, sketch already bailed for today anyway, so now we’re shooting for tomorrow. i still have to add snake suspenderz to my resume, and now i’ll be able to add another recording to my resume as well.
i really like my new host providers… no, i REALLY like my new host providers! their helpdesk techs have already been a lot more help than my previous host providers ever were (although somewhat more difficult to understand, because i get the impression that they’re outsourced to india, or mexico or some place like that): they’ve already helped me with importing a database, and fixing a CGI script, and apart from the fact that they provide several hundred times more disk space at less than half of the cost, they’ve also got a lot more user-based control panel, which means that i am the one in charge of creating and maintaining things like databases, domains and subdomains, FTP accounts, and so forth, plus they’ve got services like several different choices for a shopping cart, several different choices for marketing, including some of the most impressive web stats i have ever seen, and probably a lot more stuff i still haven’t discovered yet. this is going to make re-designing the hybrid elephant web site a lot easier! also, my impression is that part of the reason why they make it so easy is because it’s designed to be resold, and to that end, i’ve already got a couple of prospects for domains hooked up. also, i called and talked with ezra, and gave him 1gb of web space and talked about making a BaldManIsWatching.com or something like that, the idea of which he actually sounded really interested in discussing further.
also, really good potential news that may just be a fantasy at this point, so no details until it is more of a reality.
now that i can actually post again…
for those of you who have been paying attention, three days ago i switched host providers. i found one i liked (and i really like them, but that comes later), and switched the DNS settings for hybridelephant.com to point to the new nameservers. a day later, two days ago, the domain status was “ready”. for most people, there was no visible seam between the old server and the new one, unless you happened to hit www.hybridelephant.com for a couple of hours during the time when your nameserver was updating, but since it happened in the early hours of the morning, the probability is fairly low that anybody even noticed.
however, when i hit the URI, i got the old host server. i sort of vaguely anticipated this, and actually waited another 24 hours – so now we’re down to yesterday – before i started futzing with things. at first i thought it might be because the old IP address was stuck in a browser or network cache somewhere, but i rebooted my entire network, down to the router, and it still showed me the old host. this morning it still showed me the old host server, so i called the provider and discovered that, apparently, they’ve got their DNS servers set to manually update instead of automatically getting the most recent data every 24 hours (like everybody else in the motherfucking world – yet another reason why i switched host providers). once they had manually updated their DNS servers, everything worked like i thought it should.
the subdomain przxqgl.hybridelephant.com, however, was a different thing entirely. i knew that there was going to be a bit more difficulty moving the blog because of the database. i managed to download a SQL dump of the database, but then i discovered that myPHPadmin on the new host has a limitation of 8mb on files that are imported to a new database, and the database dump that i had was 12mb… and i had no way to access it other than to open it with a text editor. i found a php script called BigDump that was supposed to import large(ish) files to a new database, but i kept getting this weird error that seemed to indicate that the version of SQL that had created the database that i had downloaded was incompatible with the version of the version of SQL to which i was importing the file, in spite of the fact that they both appeared to be SQL 4.0.
at that point, i called the tech support people at the new host and gave them the problem, and within a few minutes they had figured out that the SQL from which i had exported the database had included CHARSET information that was default on their database host, had removed the offending lines of code from the database manually, and imported the database for me.
in other words, the tech support people actually helped me solve a problem, unlike the previous host’s tech support people who, with one exception, were of the opinion that if i didn’t know how to do it, why should they help me?
i’m still having a little difficulty figuring out where the email that’s supposed to be sent when people access the feedback form is going, but i’m fairly confident that everything will be working again in a day or so.
the difference: old host = 500mb of web space, tech support people who don’t actually help, $250 a year. new host = 500gb (half a terabyte!) of web space, tech support people who know what they’re talking about, $120 a year.
i like my new host! 🙂
YES!
i got it to work! 😀
more later.
changing host servers
there may be an interruption of service while the DNS settles. then it will be business as usual.
those “christians”… 8|
they keep coming up with more and more truly weird things that they do to appease their “god”. once i think i’ve seen the weirdest they have to offer, they come up with a new (or, in this case old) tradition that so totally blows away everything else i’ve learned about “christians” that it’s incredible.
apparently in the catalonia region of spain, catholic “christians” have a tradition of hiding “caganers” in nativity scenes and then challenging their friends to find them. what is a “caganer” you ask? it’s only a ceramic statuette of a well known person, like barack obama, or tennis player rafael nadal or the pope, in the act of defecation. “the figures symbolize fertilization, hope and prosperity for the coming year.”
i’m sorry but that’s just funny… and the fact that it’s associated with “christianity” makes me wonder how they think they can say anything against the “strange” traditions other religions practice.
thweeth
Punk Rock Flea Market yesterday. made $50, which is not too bad, but had to spend $10 for parking, because i had to leave at 5:00 because of another gig. i figure 5:00 was about when i would have packed up anyway, but it was nice to have my car easily accessible, even if it was 3 blocks of one-way streets the wrong direction to pick it up once i was packed up. i had to drive about 10 blocks, including around one block twice because i got in the wrong lane the first time. it was really irritating, but i got through it somehow. and it was really nice to drive up, practically to the door, load out, and drive away, rather than having to carry my boxes downstairs, across the entire building – avoiding all of the other people who were also loading out, across the parking lot, and then having to wait while everybody else got loaded out and out of the parking lot before getting to go.
the other gig i had was at the gage academy of art, which used to be cornish, and before that was a catholic school associated with st. mark’s cathedral, on capitol hill. it was snake suspenderz doing two sets out of four (one set on, one set off) while another band, the KlezKatz, performed… with thaddeus, our trombone/guitar player). i wasn’t really expecting a lot from that gig, because i knew that the other snake suspenderz are dirty old men who love to hang out in a warm room and play with naked people just so they can ogle the naked people… well, okay, i’m one of those people too… and, goddammit, i wish that guy hadn’t put that empty easel right between me and the HAWT naked female model with dreadlocks and tattoos. i really didn’t have time to look appreciatively, because i was too busy playing, and by the time i was finished playing she had already put her clothes on again.oh well… 8/
anyway, through some SNAFU about which i didn’t get the entire story, thad actually cut me a check for $50 yesterday, so in all, i did pretty much exactly what i want to do ALL THE TIME and ended up $100 richer out of the deal. now if i could only have four or five of those days every month, i’d be fairly happy.
i got a phone call from fred hawkinson yesterday. he wanted to talk about the possibility of teaming up and getting a job in a music store, or, conversely, opening our own music store, with him doing brasswind repair and me doing woodwind repair. there’s nothing more than just the fantasy at this point, but the thought of actually doing musical instrument repair alone should be enough to keep my spirits up for a while.
now i have to go and play with the ballard sedentary sousa band for the phinney winter festival, and after that i might play with the banda gozona at a gig on alki point, but i’m not sure about that yet.
happy krampusnacht!
211111
081204 – – on my way home from a fremont philharmonic/fremont players rehearsal of Cinderella
even more bizarre “christian” behaviour…
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.
–Mohandas Karmachand “Mahatma” Gandhi
“christian” =? child abuser
this morning during my daily perusal of the RSS feeds, i learned that yet another young “christian” couple has been arrested in relation to the death of their two-year-old daughter. if my two-year-old child had died, i would be upset, to say the least, and if i had been arrested in connection with that child’s death it would definitely add several more layers of stress to the whole ordeal, but this couple were arrested because they – wait for it – allegedly
beat their child to death with a hammer, to “excorcise demons” from her.
now i’m not saying that child abuse is solely a “christian” thing (i was subjected to abuse myself, as a child, and my parents are agnostic as far as i know, and i’m not talking about this sort of thing, which could be seen as child abuse or a tasteless joke – pun intended) but things like this, especially when it comes to young couples who feel the need to “excorcise” whatever demonic spirits inhabit their child, is not only ridiculously common, but it appears to get “swept under the rug” by most of “normal” society – although how anyone could consider beating a child to death with a hammer for any reason “normal” is beyond me. and i’m sure that people who aren’t “christian” beat their children with hammers, and other things, far too frequently, which makes me wonder: why is it that, when something like this appears in the news media, the perpetrators aren’t specifically identified as “christians”? if they were even suspected of being wiccans, for example, there would be no hesitation to directly identify them as such, to further villify their religious beliefs. but i read two or three articles a week concerning “christians” who torture and/or kill their children, or “christian” leaders caught having sex with children, or that sort of thing, and while it is made obvious by the context of the article that the perpetrators are “christian”, there’s no direct mention of it.
furthermore, i wonder if any studies have been done on the percentages of different religions who abuse their children. i’d be willing to bet that “christianity” is right up there near the top of the heap…
grump!
update to my my previous post, i have been recommended by two different geek friends to a new, local host service provider which comes with several hundred times more web space, has all of the services that were discontinued by my current host provider and costs less than half of what i’m currently paying. i’ve got the web site in a “portable” state and can upload it in half an hour, as soon as i sign up and change the DNS with the registrar.
i wrote this in the “Please let us know the reason you are canceling your account.” section of drizzle’s host cancellation form: “you have gotten confused about who my account actually belongs to, and have not been able to figure it out, more than once in the past month, resulting in my being billed twice for an account that i pay yearly for, and i already paid for it once this year, you have discontinued services like telnet, ssh and usenet which i use fairly regularly, and your support personnel have become surly and incompetent. besides which, i have found another local host provider that will give me several hundred times more web space, all of the services i want and cost me less than half of what you guys charge.”
however, i’m still going to have to deal with drizzle for network access until i can find another provider. that’s not as necessary, but it’s still important, and it will happen some time before the next few months have past.
growl!!
okay, some time between now and the middle of january (the sooner the better as far as i’m concerned) there will be an interruption of services for a couple of days (maximum) while i swich host service providers. the last straw for me came yesterday when i called drizzle support with a question about hybrid elephant, only to discover that somehow, unbeknownst to me, the hybrid elephant account information was for someone in spokane – liz dreisbach, the leader of the ballard sedentary sousa band. somehow drizzle got the impression that, back in august(!!) when liz changed the contact information for sedentarysousa.com, she was also changing the contact information for hybridelephant.com. so now, according to drizzle, hybridelephant.com now belongs to liz, despite the fact that hybrid elephant has been under my control for the past five years(!!) and they hadn’t even contacted me to find out whether or not this was actually the case!!
of course the control panel access still belongs to me, but if i hadn’t found out about it, liz would have very likely been billed for hybrid elephant in january, which would have been tremendously confusing and embarrassing for both me and her, but that’s not the complete reason why i’m switching host providers. drizzle disabled telnet/SSH access to their servers back in march or some time earlier this year, and recently they decided to disable news services (usenet) as well, which is something that i use fairly regularly. also, in the past year or so their “technical support” personnel have become extremely surly and incompetent. not only that, but in researching host service providers i came across two, at least, that offer more services, and are less than half the cost of drizzle.
i have been a drizzle.com user ever since i switched away from aa.net, almost 10 years ago, and i have owned the hybridelephant domain since 2002. i suppose i’m lucky to have gotten 10 years of reasonable service from them, but it’s time for a change. now, along with everything else, i have to prepare my web sites to be moved, get in touch with my registrar to change the domain host profile on my domains, contact spamcop to change my “real” email address, and probably a whole bunch of other things that i haven’t thought of yet. 8P~
I AM A TERRORIST IN SPITE OF THE GOVERNMENT! (and you should be too, if you know what’s good for you)
this is not supposed to happen: Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security
not here. not in MY country. not in the country founded on this document with these enumerated rights and this declaration of independence from state-mandated tyrrany signed by these men.
it’s time for action: it’s time to either leave the country, or start fomenting revolution or – preferrably – both. yes, the government has “changed”, but in spite of everything that has been said apparently it’s still just business as usual, and nobody seems to be taking the slightest bit of notice as the government is snatched away from “we the people” in bits and pieces right before our eyes!
the police and sherrifs are supposed to handle law enforcement. the national guard is supposed to handle civic emergency response. the military is for fighting wars. deploying the military on united states soil is declaring war against the inhabitants of that land.
That’s us, citizens.
and yes, i know they SAY it’s to bolster security against terrorism and national emergencies. just like the patriot act and FISA and no-fly lists were supposed to do. and yet, everyday citizens are being prosecuted or restricted based on discoveries from these “protective” mandates for non-terrorism or treasonous activity.
George Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, not a guidebook.
welcome to the U. S. S. A.
amis nah yeb stomb
yesterday i was supposed to go to marysville to pick up the business cards for MIVC from troy the printer. i was supposed to pick them up at noon, and i figured that saturday northbound would take me about an hour. at 10:30 – half an hour before i was supposed to leave – i get a call from troy, asking me when i was planning on being there, and when i told him noon, he said that he had neglected to get the business cards actually printed, and asked me if i could come tomorrow – which is today. of course that left me with nothing to do, but i said okay, because if i had picked them up yesterday he would have printed them, but he would have slip-sheeted them before cutting (so that the wet ink doesn’t offset on to the back of the card above it) and i would have had to un-slip-sheet them which is a tedious project that i would sooner not have to do anyway.
so, anyway, i spent yesterday processing photos of my inventory (which will eventually be visible on the Hybrid Elephant web site). about 9:00 pm i got a call from Howlin’ Hobbit who wanted to know what i was doing tomorrow morning. i told him that i was planning on going to marysville, but hobbit tempted me with busking at the Ballard Sunday Market, which sounded good enough to me that i changed my plans for going to marysville from morning until afternoon. i also packed three empty 5-gallon water bottles, because since i was going to marysville, swamp creek was right on the way, and i figured that way i could kill three birds with one stone.
i’m glad i did. i showed up in ballard at 9:30 am, and by 1:00 pm i was $50 richer. we played two extended sets, and made $150 between the three of us. sketch was, sadly, not present for some unknown reason – but in this case that was okay, because it was more money for the rest of us. also, i ran into fred, for the first time in several years, and mentioned that i would be interested in setting up a musical instrument repair shop with him, and he said he would call me. for a brief time there were two different trombones busking at the ballard market, a fact which i find to be somewhat unusual.
after we vacated the market, i went to swamp creek and filled my water bottles, went up to marysville and picked up cards from troy (it’s quite a drive, but he’s the only printer i know who is willing to do printing for me in exchange for computer technical support) and made it home by 4:00. i feel accomplished. if only every day could contain such accomplishment.
snarg
Ganesha the Car on WikiMapia.
it’s looking more and more like i’m going to go with an osCommerce solution for the web site.
web thoughts
it has become increasingly obvious that i am going to have to do a major site conversion for Hybrid Elephant, and i’ve been examining different ways to go about it. i have been focusing, mainly, on learning PHP so i can duplicate the unfolding menus in the left hand frame, and re-doing the design CSS to eliminate the frames without losing their functionality. but learning PHP just so that i can duplicate unfolding menus seems to be a bit much – although not entirely unwelcome as a consequence, it may take me a couple years study to fully understand PHP, and i can find the unfolding menu technology other places in the mean time.
there is a WordPress e-commerce plugin that – i think – will cover the parts of it that i don’t already have covered, make the conversion to PHP a lot easier, and should make things like a database and photos a whole lot easier to deal with as well. there’s also something that i found out about as a result of my searching for wordpress and ecommerce, which is osCommerce, apparently an open-source online merchant system with all the bells and whistles.
HA!
There Probably Is has a rotating text header that says, among other things:
Think For Yourself!
Christians have always offered people opportunity to explore for themselves. We want to give you an opportunity to think for yourself. What’s missing from life when you take God out of the picture?
this is the same web site which belongs to the guy who claims to be a “spiritual leader” of a community, who has, so far, completely ignored my honest query to him.
this is exactly why i’m so frustrated with “christian” behaviour. i exist, despite your efforts to ignore me, and i won’t go away any faster if you pretend i don’t.
in other news, it’s all their fault: much to the chagrin of John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, McDonald’s has patented the making of a sandwich.
whap!
since thursday i’ve filled an order for business cards for NBAC, and taken but not yet filled an order for business cards from MIVC, and filled an order for $50.00 worth of incense, which comes around to $207 and some change. let it continue!
VALIDATION!
if i needed more, here is yet more confirmation that hinduism is correct path for me, regardless of what the “christians” have to say about it: i emailed Rev. Evan Cockshaw, who is the genius behind "There Probably Is" and asked him why he hasn’t posted my "testimony” yet", and guess what?
he ignored me. of course…
it seems pretty typical for “christians” to ignore someone if they’re not immediately willing to accept the dreck they’re swimming in. on the other hand, as i’ve said before, the hindu teachers i have met – even the bogus ones – have taken delight in answering questions that would appear to be blasphemous to the normal “christian” mind. and even the bogus hindu teachers i’ve experienced are more entertaining than about 99% of the “christians” i have experienced.
hungary harrison “christian”
that’s where some guy ordered incense from today – budapest, hungary. he ordered $4.25 worth of incense, so i have to add $50 shipping for $4.25 worth of incense.
personally, i think he should know that it would be cheaper (and probably better quality) to buy it closer to home, but i think the problem is that internet makes normal people stupid. i have many examples of this: regan fraser, brendan fraser‘s brother, was my housemate at one point about 15 years ago, and when he found out that i worked with internet, he begged me to get involved in this scheme that he had to rip people off by accessing their bank accounts over internet. or the client that i currently have who is convinced that his virus protection program “is tired” of notifying him that he has a virus – he’s convinced that he’s got a virus, even though three different virus scanners have given him a clean bill of health…
someone turned me on to a whole pile of information about my great-great-great-grandfather and his descendants that are a part of my family, but not directly related to me. apparently such people include William Henry Harrison along with several other william henry harrisons (I through V, i think).
i submitted the following to There Probably Is dot com, and i really hope they actually post it, but i get the impression that they won’t.
Brief Biography
I am a Hindu Christian Dervish Buddhist Thelemic Tinite Antichrist Anarchist Tuba-Playing ? (??? – Canis nyctereutes procyonoides) with a Brain Injury.
I am a Hindu Christian Dervish Buddhist Thelemic Tinite Antichrist Anarchist Tuba-Playing ? (??? – Canis nyctereutes procyonoides) with a Brain Injury.
Submit your story
I believe in God because … i was raised by parents who were largely agnostic. They may have had some religion, but if they did, they kept it to themselves. I attended a Unitarian church when I was small, but the classes I took were more along creative lines than religious ones, and I grew up thinking of “church” as more of a social club than a place for worship.
Then, when I was first starting college, I encountered people who claimed to be “christian” but were more like parrots than people in terms of what they told me about “christianity”. They couldn’t give me a good enough reason to believe, apart from pie-in-the-sky promises to which nobody in their right mind would pay attention.
I took a class called “Introduction to Personal Philosophy” which everybody informally called “The Fly In The Fly-Bottle” or just “the fly-bottle class” in which there was an assignment that caused me to change my mind. The assignment was “for a certain, set period of time (I chose a month), act as though there is an all-powerful God and see how your life changes.” As soon as I believed that there was a God, I was able to see Him everywhere, although He (and I use the term advisedly) was not what the “christians” said He was like at all. For one thing, He wasn’t always a “He” – sometimes She was a thought, or feeling, or a smell. I quickly learned that when coincidences happen – for example, I went for an entire week where the price of everything I bought ended with 84 cents – that is God communicating with me in a way that I didn’t immediately understand. Everywhere I looked, and everywhere I look to this day, I see God essentially “peering out” from behind everything, saying “Here I am!” There is no question that I have of God that He has not answered, and He guides my every step.
His name is Ganesha.
i guess i’m disappointed with them for discriminating against me, but at the same time, what did i expect from a “christian” web site?
oh, also…
i have "parked" Ganesha The Car in Jay Leno’s Garage. of course i’m expecting that he will not post it because of the swastika, but…
hrmph…
so i’ve been looking at a lot of different sites recently having to do with SEO, and been i’ve been becoming more and more convinced that one of the primary reasons why i’m not bringing in more money from the web site is because it is based on frames. in fact, it has been based on frames for 7 years now, and hasn’t caused me or my visitors any perceivable difficulty so far, but it apparently gets in the way of search-engine crawlers, which negatively affects my google rating and results in my web pages effectively discriminated against when people search for them… which disturbs me, because i’m supposedly in business to make money, and a decision that i made 8 years ago (which was when frames were first being introduced to the web) is now getting in the way of my being able to do business more effectively.
all this has increased the urgency with which i am now modifying my web site, although at this point, the urgency is mitigated by my lack of knowledge of things that i could use to replace the frames. there’s a lot i can do with CSS which affect the way people view my pages, but there’s one thing that – i think – i’m going to have to do with PHP, and i don’t know PHP at all. although people have said to me many times that, if i can understand HTML and CSS, PHP wouldn’t be that difficult, it’s still a daunting task to learn an entirely new language and update my entire web site. the observant person will, of course, have recognised that there’s no time limitation on when i get it completed, but my response to that is to say that every day i don’t update my web site is another day where my google rating is negatively affected by the frames, and another day that people don’t find my web site in search engines, and another day that they don’t purchase things from me. obviously, i could hire some PHP-geek to redesign the entire site for me, but how would i pay for it? and, with what i can afford to pay, what guarantee do i have that my web site won’t suddenly appear as a spammer site and be pushed to an even lower rating in the search engines?
meanwhile, i figured out that i can actually build the structure of the dome that i want to build for a minimum of $200, which is almost do-able – if i want to “make do” with a wooden-frame dome – or a maximum of $400, which is a little bit out of my range at the moment, but shouldn’t be too hard to achieve within 6 months if i work at it – for a metal-frame dome. i built a model out of toothpicks and kneaded-rubber eraser, to see exactly how many frame-pieces i am going to need: 35 sections that are 4 feet 11.28 inches (8 foot radius time a chord factor of .61803), and 30 sections that are 4 feet 4.44 inches (8 foot radius times a chord factor of .54653) to build a 16-foot diameter 2V Icosa Alternate dome.
the only problem is that i keep getting catalogues from places that have stuff i really want to buy (and sell), and the result is that instead of having $180 in my bank account, i spent $75 on some ganesha murtis which should be delivered some time early next week.
but at the same time, i also got a business card order from NBAC, which should replace that $75, and it may even do so before the ganesha murtis are delivered.
FSM!
okay, this morning i got up and went to the fremont sunday market. it didn’t seem like a particularly outrageous day, and i was a little confused when 4:00 came around and everybody started packing up. i knew that during the winter they moved up the closing time from 5:00 to 4:00, but i didn’t realise that they had already done it – last week, of course, when i wasn’t there… but as i was packing up, someone came by and bought a small box of Ten Pyo, someone else bought a box of hakubai, and a guy came all the way from bellingham to buy 10 krishna musk, which added $70 to my total. it turns out that, all told, i made $180 – my best day ever at the FSM!
Requiescat In Pacem, Tuba Man
i went to the public memorial for ed mcmichael yesterday, and it was outstanding – of course i really wish that it wasn’t necessary, but ed would have loved it. i got to meet richard peterson, and kelsey, ed’s older brother. the SYSO alumni brass played (i would have played with them, but that would have meant bringing two instruments, and i already had enough to carry), the tuba choir – 13 tubas, of which mine was one – played and sounded as good as i would have expected a group which had been rehearsing for months to have sounded. i was interviewed by lori matsukawa from King5 news. the speakers, of whom richard and kelsey were two, said funny, poignant and entirely true things about ed, the videos they showed brought a tear to my eye, the music was excellent, all of the major sports teams gave ed a personalised jersey
but, you know, i would give all these things back to know that it had been a horrible joke and that ed was still alive somewhere, and chortling with perverted glee at having pulled such a fast one on the entire city. it wouldn’t surprise me an awful lot to learn that he had been planning all this for some time.
not likely. B/
The Last Time You Will Ever See This Horn
guess what i saw northbound on I-5 yesterday
happy veterans’ day, people… 8/
meh!
the battle of the computer has begun again… 8/
i was finishing recovery from the battle of a couple months ago, and (finally) getting around to installing LilyPond. admittedly, the computer was a little busier than normal, because i also had firefox, openoffice, the gimp and my music player running at the same time, and the computer crashed. as i was already running late to get to a client’s place by 3:30, i figured i’d start the whole process over when i got home, so i just shut everything down and took off.
when i returned, at 10:30, i booted the computer and i had a bizarre icon in the “systray”-like thing in what passes for the task bar in kubuntu, which i discovered was the “disconnected” icon for the network manager. this was a little strange, but not entirely unexpected, so i got out the terminal and typed in ifconfig eth0 down and then ifconfig eth0 up, but nothing happened. i fudged around with some of my system settings to see if that did any good, but ultimately i couldn’t get it connected, so i went to bed.
this morning i got up early and tried to get the network connected, because i had to transpose a part for the ed mcmichael memorial that i am playing for tomorrow, and, as the network was disconnected on my main computer, that meant that i had to transpose the part on windows (which is the only other place that i have lilypond installed). so i fired up windows and, lo and behold, the “Local Area Network cable disconnected” icon was there, as well. 8/
so then i fired up MacOsX, which went out and found internet without a problem – naturally. but i then realised that the macs are connecting directly with the router via wireless, whereas linux and windows connect to the router by way of wires, which go through an ethernet switch. so, i unplugged linux from the switch and plugged it directly into the router, and it worked. 8/
so i’ve narrowed down what is wrong, and at this point i have ordered a new ethernet switch, which should be delivered in 3 days or so, but the only computers that currently have network access are the wireless computers (mine and moe’s) and linux – and, despite everything, i still haven’t gotten mac and linux to talk to each other. 8/
and, to make matters worse, i had to resort to using a flash disk “sneaker net” to ferry the transposed part from windows to linux, where i could print it.
i guess i should be glad i know how to figure out what’s wrong with this mess of wires and computer-junk, because if i didn’t, then i’d really be screwed.
random not dead people geekery
a few years ago i posted a form on the web that asks for bizarre and non-existent information from people who respond to it, which, when submitted, then emails me the results. i hid it on the web (no prizes for figuring out where) in a place where people who were looking at the link wouldn’t necessarily see it, and click it by mistake when they clicked a link to go somewhere else – my experience as a stage magician has helped me considerably when it comes to computers in general and this is no exception.
after getting the person’s email, name and “Period”, the questions it asks are:
| Diagram A |
|---|
 |
1. Who is God?
2. THAT THAT IS IS THAT THAT IS NOT IS NOT IS THAT THAT IS THAT THAT IS NOT NO THAT THAT IS IS NOT THAT THAT IS NOT IS THAT THAT IS NOT THAT THAT IS NO THAT THAT IS NOT IS NOT THAT THAT IS IS THAT NOT IT?
3. Rstndxvrl bsntgrblr woognex; sneg kluppits gsmxdrb snt twzznrks splt fznig trook fsaabowntfsst. Aqno feblat aigs nxtmbbr wzzl vbnestrxr?
the fourth question is “Put a dot where you think you are on Diagram A” with a table cell containing “Diagram A” which is a plain white picture with no marking except a small word “Essex” circled with an arrow pointing to the left side of the picture. you can’t actually put a dot on the picture, but i’m fairly sure that doesn’t stop people from trying.
the final 2 entries are “Describe in detail. Be concise and specific. Give examples when necessary.” above a text box – where people usually write complaints about the fact that they can’t actually put a dot on the previous diagram – and the final text box says “Sign someone else’s name”.
occasionally i’ll get an email from someone who has stumbled on the quiz (which is deceptively titled “Qualification Examination”) and the responses look like this example, which i got yesterday:
email: [redacted]
name: Mammy
period: 23
1: Myself
2: yes
3: Vsr; grfner webttn vsblttr
5: it really is, isn’t it?
6: robert anton wilson
i updated the form today to ask where they came from and why, and i’m thinking about ways to ask something like “Explain your answer” after every question, without completely redesigning the form.
in other news; How to Make a Schadenfreude Pie
more mourning for a good friend
i went to the musicians’ memorial for ed mcmichael today. there were about 50 people with instruments, including 5 tubas (of which mine was one), about 150 to 200 other people, and the media photographers and video-technicians. the musical instruments were a mish-mash of everything, including a couple of banjos, an accordion, a complete string section (two violins, a cello and a stand up bass), a bass saxophone (from The Tempos, although the guy didn’t remember me or my father), two or three french horns, several trumpets, and at least one clarinet. we played some dixieland-style funeral music (“When the Saints Go Marching In”, “Second Line” and that sort of thing), and some of ed’s favourites including Amazing Grace, Ode To Joy, Tequila and the UW fight song (which is called “Bow Down to Washington”). i’m going to be a part of the public memorial on wednesday, and i might even get to play twice, once as a member of the tuba community, and once as an alumnus of SYSO, seeing as how ed and i were both part of SYSO during the ’70s.
i’m still really devastated that ed is dead, and that some nameless teenage doodlehums killed him. apparently they’ve caught another one (which makes three now, only two more to go), but even when they have caught all of them, that won’t bring ed back or make the rest of his friends feel any better. what the fuck, thugs?