Blogging for daniels

Costa Rica

2011-10-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

I was just browsing over a few old posts and I realized I neglected to mention that I have now totally been to Costa Rica. I can report that it's a lovely place to totally go.

Not only are the people quite friendly, but it's choc-a-block with interesting flora and fauna, some of which are delicious, but all of which are quite intriguing. To be honest, I didn't eat a lot of the local fauna, but I stayed alert for unusual fruits to nosh on. My mom used to occasionally bring home weird and unusual fruits when I was growing up. We'd all come and try them out and usually we got sea-monkeyed by a star fruit or dragon fruit, but occasionally we'd learn that kiwis or mangoes were delicious and add them to our list of regulars. Sometimes mom would unaccountably learn something false, like papayas are delicious, and the rest of us would have to choke down fruit that tastes like mucus, but overall it was worth it.

So anyway, arriving at adulthood, I felt I had a pretty good handle on what the world's fruit is generally like. There are millions of versions of tiny oranges that all taste the same; a handful of reliable standards like apples, pears, bananas, peaches, nectarines and plums; and some more interesting if still standard "tropical" fruits like mangoes, pineapple, papayas (blech). Finally, there are the weirder options like lychees, ugli, star fruit which never really caught on because they're awful, dull, or just not worth the extra effort.

So when I went to St. Lucia some time back and had myself a soursop, which is the best fruit on Earth, I felt a little betrayed. It was the same way I felt when I found out that cuttlefish are not just the source of those weird shells that look like soap dishes and wash up on beaches in England for no apparent reason. They are also astonishing alien-like beasties that can change both the color and texture of their skin, see as well as us, and already know the manner and time of your death.

That's why (the fruit bit, not the cuttlefish), when I go places I haven't been before, I want to try the fruit. The weird thing about Costa Rica is their utter reluctance to ply you with new fruit. So weird is this, that it extends to mangoes. I found this lack of mango frustrating, not because it's new and exotic any more, but because it was falling out of the goddamn trees whenever the wind blew. Nevertheless, we could not get served a plate of it for love or money.

Every morning we sat down to a platter of FANTASTIC pineapple, quite good bananas, papayas that tasted unremarkably like snot, and wholly inexplicable watermelon. I'd gaze wistfully out into the hotel parking lot where cars had started a reasonably compelling mango chutney using nothing more than gravity and the bushels of fresh fruit that had fallen from the trees during the night, and wonder what the blazing hell was going on around here.

I know where you live and I want my mango back, gringo!

I finally seized my chance when a troupe of white-throated Capuchin monkeys started shaking a tree for fruit and knocked some to the ground. Monkeys may be hella strong, but I wanted my fruit, dammit. I dashed across the street, grabbed a mango, and pranced away one mango richer and slightly worried about being chased down and gang-mauled by a tribe of feisty Capuchins.

It was delicious.

Now I'm back in the U.S. where I just heard about the Paw Paw which grows in like Ohio or something for godsake. What the hell supermarkets? You've got mango-like superfruits growing in my own back yard and you won't find and sell them to me because they're not created from seeds made by Monsanto?

Moving. It sucks.

2011-10-17T17:22:00.000-07:00

Moving first myself and then my girlfriend in the last month has given me a keen insight into moving. It sucks. I've learned other things too ....

1) It truly sucks. I learned this first from everyone else. You know how science tells us childbirth is awful but that there's a part of women's brains that, for the preservation of the species (and because brains are misogynists), helps you forget that fact in the face of sexytimes? Well that part of the brain doesn't exist for moving. Nor does the part of the brain that edits what you say about it or when, apparently.

My friends, when I told them I was getting ready to move, happily assured me it would be fucking awful. Thanks, pals! When I asked my boss for a day off to prepare, she raised a hand to cut me off as though I'd told her a family member had died. Moving? Say no more. "Moving is hell," she admonished me. Even a completely random guy outside Staples who saw me and my sweetheart walking along with our freshly purchased boxes and bubble-wrap figured he should weigh in and explain, you know, in case we were otherwise without human contact. He'd moved the weekend before and could vouch that, "moving sucks!"

But of course, they were all right. Why you ask?

2) It takes longer than you expect. A lot of things take longer than you expect, adoption of the metric system, general acceptance of evolutionary theory, college, whatever. But unlike a lot of these things, which only take longer than expected in blue states, moving takes longer than you expect no matter how long you expect. It's like a weird twist of Zeno's paradox, but rather than resulting in never getting there, you instead find yourself cramming whatever you can lay your hands on in boxes or bags or, well mostly the trash, as the moving truck sways around the corner.

My girlfriend, who I'll be calling Alphonse from here on out, benefited slightly from my packing mayhem weeks earlier, because when I showed up and found her considering whether this knick-knack was a better candidate for the kitchen box or the things-from-my-mid-twenties box, I pooped. More than was strictly necessary, given how effing smart she is, I explained, nay insisted, that the gig was up and it was time to narrow choices down to the "is it coming" boxes and the trash.

3) Holy shit we live with a lot of trash! Alphonse and I each lived in a one bedroom. Hers was quite small and mine was a bit larger. I threw out (or recycled, you humorless harpies) around 8 large trash bags of junk I will never miss, along with three boxes of books that went to the used bookstore conveniently open for donations between like 10AM and 4PM, those precious darlings. Alphonse remarked that the process made her feel like a hoarder. So anyway, my best gal and I have agreed that we will do a monthly purge of our stuff so we don't find ourselves surrounded by crap come March. I suspect it's a lie we use to comfort ourselves, but I'll let you know.

The worst part of that is that the grand total of crap doesn't even include the TWO trips I made to the dump to get rid of a desk, two bookshelves, a dead hobo and god only knows what else.

WHEEEEEEEE!!!

4) Going to the dump effing rules!!!! Moving is a stressful endeavor that you're not good at because you don't practice. There are entirely too many choices about what to take, how to pack it, and where to put it once you're there. As the previous item suggests, a lot of stuff that you've hidden under the proverbial rug because you couldn't work out where to put it resurfaces and requires some dealing with. Take that shit to the dump. It's liberating as hell.

Once you arrive at the dump, you are a samurai. The choice is made. This desk will not be recycled or dropped off at Goodwill. This desk will be excised from the list of your possessions and all that remains is to execute your good choice. And the execution requires no paperwork, no planning, no stress. I arrived and began fretting about the correct protocols for disposing of my stuff. The protocol, apparently, is you park in the general vicinity of a huge pile of refuse in the Fort Totten area, extract the unwanted item from your car, take a couple of discus thrower spins for good effect and spin the large wooden plane that was lately the top of your desk as far as you can away from you and toward the center of the heap. It's primal; it's final; and no one there gives a rats ass if you could have reused or recycled that crap.

5) Unpacking takes forever and chicks need lots of closet space. There's no further insight for item 5. It's just true. Plan ahead.

Stepdad sitting

2011-09-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

This week has been either busy or terrifically dull, depending on outlook.

I moved on Saturday just in time to sleep in the new spot for two nights before hopping on a plane home to Michigan where I've been looking after my stepfather. He's suffered from blood-clots in the lungs and minor strokes, as well as a lifetime of anaphylactic shock brought on by the merest hint of exercise. He's generally okay, but needs help. It's tedious, but mostly not too bad.

Stab directly into heart in case of aerobics!

Still, I'm anxious to get back to my largely unpacked apartment and start positioning stuff and getting organized. I'm moving in with my girlfriend, which is exciting, but she won't move until probably the beginning or middle of next month, which still gives me precious little time to get things organized just right before she comes and ruins the couch fort I'm building. Girls!

The kitchen will be my domain since I'm the one who finally threw up my hands in frustration and organized her kitchen so I could cook there. I also had to buy her knives because the vaguely wedge-shaped slabs of metal she was using were better suited to tenderizing meat than cutting it, and honestly, if you were trying to slice cheese, you'd have been better off with a mallet. I actually don't understand how so many people get by with crappy crappy knives. With a good knife you can do just about anything in the kitchen. A bad knife just causes you to cut yourself, or sometimes helpful sorts who happen along to inquire what's taking so long.

Now, the week is coming to a close and I'm feeling both a bit bored out of my skull and as though I've done nothing at all all week. I had big plans for accomplishing things while I was here, but most of my attention's been focused on ye olde stepdad. I obviously have time, as I'm writing here rather than doing what I should be up to, but this is sort of therapeutic. Shortly I'll dive into what I'm supposed to be doing and see what I can salvage from this week running aground in Michigan. Then later, we'll go for a walk, assuming my stepdad's throat doesn't close up when I mention the possibility of a little exercise.

Yoga

2011-08-20T10:44:00.001-07:00

It's taken me longer to get to yoga than might be expected by those who know me.

Friends might reasonably expect me to take to it the way I did with Tai Chi, hackey-sack, volleyball, gymnastics, Kali, ultimate or any of the other left of center sports I've enjoyed over the years. Obviously, I've never been one to stick to sports that present as particularly masculine. I did volleyball and gymnastics in high school followed by intramural crocheting and varsity menses in college. In one indelible memory from grad school, I experienced a bright moment of lucidity while enjoying the crap out of a gift from my sister (a subscription to Bon Apetit - manly!). A terrifying certainty came upon me that I had to go immediately to the local kickboxing gym and man up a little. I don't really subscribe to sticking to appropriately gender-rolled sports since I think you should play whatever's fun. Still, I think it's good to play both sides of the divide for balance's sake.

So, yoga's a little feminine, true but I think the real issue is that it's extremely hippie. The physical element is demanding, but not nearly so much as keeping my smart mouth shut when people ask me to thank the universe or open a third eye. Also, and this can't be stressed enough. I'm not flexible and was quite fearful about yoga.

A few years ago I ran afoul of a friendly but dumb karate instructor at a dojo in NYC. He "helped" me with my stretching to the point where I felt a sort of disconcerting twang from my groin and continue to be essentially unable to separate my legs beyond about 80 degrees, side to side. This wouldn't be a big issue in my life except that I really do like kickboxing and it's tough to practice Muay Thai if you can only kick your opposite from the knee down.

Anyway, I picked up yoga about three months ago when a friend of my girlfriend suggested she and her boyfriend go with me and my gal to yoga together before brunch. I can't make enough jokes about my yuppie life here, so go ahead and insert your own. Based on the setup, it's structurally impossible for any of them to be over the line - by all means, use the comments.

So that's how I got started. I quickly learned that I'm unusual at yoga. I can't, for instance, sit comfortably cross-legged on the floor (very rudimentary for most yogis), but I can do a handstand, bow pose (bridge), or crow pose. These are very rudimentary for gymnasts. In fact, the crow pose wasn't called either yoga or gymnastics by my gymnastics team members; it was called "fucking around" and was kind of a trifle.

So what happens sometimes in class is that we start off doing stuff that I'm okay at - forward stretches and such, transition into difficult stuff that I'm great at, and end with cool-down poses that I fucking gasp and cry at. I'm a yoga idiot savant.

Recently however, I've been moving just toward the idiot end of the scale. I think, sadly, that I may have to start stretching before yoga. That began as a bon mot but may shortly become my life. Somewhere along the line I seem to have pulled the entire right side of my ass, which limits mobility somewhat. I was hoping yoga would help me strengthen the appropriate accessory muscles and loosen up the rest, but what I think it's done is to convince me I need physical therapy.

There's a fine line

2011-08-17T20:02:00.001-07:00

Between ratatouille and rancid vegetable mush. Apparently that line is quickly crossed when you leave the ratatouille in a pot on the stove for two days.

Blech.

Ratatouille, for you goggle-eyed, peasant-class, boob tube monkeys who only know it as the name of a delightful children's movie, began as a French vegetable stew. It's the un-deconstructed version of the dish at the end of that same movie. To make it you stew a lot of vegetables together, sometimes after frying them, but that's sort of up to you. If ever there were a delicious French peasant repast, it's ratatouille and crusty bread with butter and a few bottles of table wine.

I went and bought the ingredients the other day at that bastion of fine produce, Safeway. In D.C. there are multiple Safeways. The one in Georgetown is the "Social" Safeway because I guess it's a good place to meet slutty people who cook or something. My Safeway is, I believe, sometimes referred to as the "Soviet" Safeway because of the history of crappy selection. It's not bad these days, but the produce is not going to wow you. That's okay, it's a stew. As long as the vegetables are relatively fresh and you can get some garlic and basil, you're okay.

As an aside, I'm sick and tired of D.C.'s farmers markets. Where I'm from, the Midwest, which has the distinction of being near a farm or two, farmers markets were places you would show up with money to meet farmers who showed up with vegetables still dirty from the walloping great field of earth they'd just been pulled out of. The half with too many vegetables gave them to the half with too much money in fair trade and you went home with some hideous, but cheap and delicious veggies and fruit.

I went to the Dupont farmers market and they have cedar planked salmon and overpriced, sad looking strawberries. Everything is marked organic; Everything is expensive as hell; And everything bears that slight taint of being touched by at least one earnest yuppie too many.

So, back to the Safeway where yours truly is trying to answer questions from the Latina checkout lady who has, with the same sort of instinct that draws cats to allergic people, intuited that my Spanish is exactly good enough to give her a good laugh. She opened simply enough by asking if I was a vegetariano. Porque no tuve carne (I didn't have meat). I, quixotically, tried to explain that, no, I wasn't a vegetarian, but today I was making a delicious French meal called ratatouille that didn't require meat. I may have gotten it across to her, but she did end up asking if I spoke French.

Anyway, the ratatouille was a disaster of burned garlic, missing basil and rather drab vegetables. Nevertheless, and here's one of the key selling points of this dish, it came together nicely. It wasn't great, but even bad ratatouille paired with some bread and butter gets the job done. I ate it for two days, during which time my gut inquired frequently and loudly as to what the hell I thought I was up to. It made one exercise class in particular kind of touch-and-go. Still, plenty of fiber and deliciousness even if I was producing high-grade construction-ready adobe in my spare time.

Finally, yesterday, I got a mouthful of the ratatouille that I'd been leaving on the stove (not for philosophically grounded reasons, but because I'm an orangutan) and realized that somewhere during the night my french cuisine had transubstantiated into compost.

So, here's how to make ratatouille:
- cut up a bunch of the following: 1 egg plant, 1-2 summer squash/courgettes, a couple of bell peppers, some mushrooms, 6 cloves of garlic, a handful of parsley and a handful or more of basil (expert tip: you can't really add too much basil to anything). This is a rough meal, so things don't have to be chopped up finely. Cut the eggplant, for instance, into rounds about half an inch in height and then quarter the rounds.
- Open a tin or two of tomatoes, and look, this isn't a highly engineered dish here you prancing tit, stop fretting about whether it's one tin or two. See how you like it with one and try it with two next time. That's cooking.
- (Second expert tip: put the chopped up eggplant into a bowl and either sprinkle salt on it or drop it into boiling water for about 30 seconds. This helps alleviate the bitter taste you sometimes get with eggplant).
- lightly saute the 6 or so cloves of garlic in a few tablespoons of olive oil (a little butter thrown in has never hurt either, you pompous ascetic) in a very large cooking pot.
- Add some salt and pepper and drop in the mushrooms and courgettes (oh, courgettes are the English term for what you goofs call zuchini - we speak English here in the U.S. of A. so, er, love it or leave it, etc. and so forth. Also, Freedom Fries!)
- Saute until you've got a little brown on the mushrooms but before you've totally burned the garlic. Burned garlic tastes like failure in cooking, so avoid it as sedulously as possible. Expert tip 3: You will never use the word sedulously in conversation.
- Add the eggplant and whatever else I've forgotten to tell you to add so far, including the tomatoes.
- Turn the whole mess down to a medium simmer. Add chicken stock or water if it's not kind of watery and go away and have a beer or two. Check in as necessary.
- When is it done? Taste it occasionally. It's a stew so it's got the consistency of thin chilli. All the veggies are okay to eat raw, so basically you're just adding heat to mix the flavors.
- Eat with crusty bread and irresponsible amounts of butter.
- REFRIGERATE THE LEFTOVERS. I cannot stress this enough.

The final result should look EXACTLY like this:

Or you can use that computer network I've been hearing so much about.

Disclaimer: If you burn yourself on my ratatouille recipe, or learn the hard way that you're allergic to anything in it, it serves you right. I'm not your life-coach. Exercise some critical thinking when you do stuff. I take no responsibility for your dumb mistakes. Mine are trying enough.

Digital Love Help

2011-08-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

I just signed up for theicebreak website. Maybe ironically. I'm not sure yet.

As far as I can make out, the site encourages you to take the pulse of your relationship from time to time then makes recommendations based on how satisfied you say you are with things like the amount of quality time you've spent with your [insert term of affection of your choice here - you can use "sweet baboo" as my boss does if you're drawing a blank].

I rated my relationship as healthy, since I'm shortly moving in with my [cutie pie] and frankly over the moon about it. However, she's out of the country for a couple weeks, so I rated my overall satisfaction with amount of quality time as lowest of the things I was asked about. Theicebreak suggests an evening of boardgames, which tells me two things: First, theicebreak is an elderly lady in a floral print dress (it's second suggestion was to take a bath or soak my feet!!).

Second, it has never seen me or my [sassy little monkeypants] play a board game. My [boo] and I are seldom competitive with one another, but we are in fact both crazy competitive where stupid games are involved. I fear theicebreak has found an efficient, if boring as hell, way to break us up. Thanks a lot website!

My next experiment is to tell it I'm finding our physical relationship lacking and see what terrible terrible idea it suggests. "Have you considered hugging?" I'll get back to you on what it comes up with.

In other ways, the site seems like email for couples who are at that stage in their true love where they have run out of things to talk about and decided it was best to stop. It encourages you to share pictures just for your [beloved] - and for the news media if you're Anthony Wiener or any number of ethics-touting/aggressively anti-gay GOP heavies. It also gives you ideas about "Icebreakers" to share with your partner. Some of these seem like things you should have talked about on dates 4-8. Others seem like excuses for fights.

In the former camp are questions like "what's the sexiest part of your partner's body." Guys, it's their personality. In the latter are softballs like "would you rather grow old with someone you settled for or be alone when you are older because you never found true love." Holy crap. That's specifically not a question for your [dear sweet smoocheyface]. It's a question for overly earnest college seniors in a WB movie that reimagines the Great Gatsby as a bittersweet rom-com set at NYU all about the trials of joining adulthood.

Still, sometimes technology confounds our best predictions. Twitter, as it turns out, has very little to do with the rampant narcissism everyone thought it would fuel and be fueled by. I'll wait and see. I'm pretty sure my [north, my south, my certain azimuth] will not be going for this nonsense. I'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons I like her so much.

Storytelling

2011-05-10T17:52:00.000-07:00

Like me, but I'm funnier.

A while back I stood on stage and told a bunch of people a story, and thankfully they laughed.

About 5 weeks prior I started a class run by speakeasy d.c. on storytelling. We had our "final" at Chief Ike's Mambo Room and Pastry Parlour (or something).

The story I told was about two times I got my ass kicked - I mean actually, not metaphysically. The "profs" got us up on stage ahead of time so we'd know how far to stand from the mic and how not to freak out under the glare of the spotlights or the scrutiny of strangers. We were supposed to say our name and our favorite color. I quipped that my favorite color was fear of public speaking. Then I went and drank.

Mostly I drank soda because my blood-sugar kept sinking, but I preceded it with a strong salutary draught ... for nerves.

Then we storytellers got to go upstairs and consider our stories--and anxieties--for a while. I realized mine didn't have a very good ending--the story or, consequently, the anxieties. Luckily, with the help of the alcohol, I managed to think of how I didn't really care.

The night was supposed to open with the strongest storyteller from the class, who I have to admit was not me, and then I was supposed to help carry us over the finish line toward the end. Instead, the woman going first came in late and ended up going right before me. Fantastic.

My girlfriend tells me I did a very good job, and although that sounds about as credible as your mom telling you you're smart and handsome, you should know this about my girlfriend: She's honest, sometimes regrettably so. And I'm really good at reading her.

So, I have to concede that my story went over well. I remember hardly any of it. When my name was called I adopted the same trick I used when I jumped out of a plane a while back: I reined my considered event horizon in to about a distance of 2 seconds. Before my stupid limbic system could explain how I was going to fail, I took a breath and dashed for the stage. Take that, brain!

I certainly got some good laughs at the points I expected. I also got a laugh at a spot when I really didn't expect one, which is odd. I wish now I hadn't been suffering a nearly mortal case of nerves and could have remembered not just that people had laughed, but when. I supposed I'll have to get up at a more regular Speakeasy event and try again.

Just like skydiving, I remember little, I think I enjoyed it and I kind of want to go again.

Speaking of, my friend is telling a story tonight at Town for a Speakeasy called Eye of the Tiger, which focuses on winning and losing. I expect it will be a lot of fun and any of you in the D.C. area should come on down and have a look. You will like it.

http://www.speakeasydc.com/

Baconalia?

2011-04-12T16:39:00.000-07:00

You may have heard that Denny's is launching some fancy bacon-related promotion of foods with bacon in them. If you craved a bacon sundae, Denny's now has half the answer to your problems: A bacon sundae. Whatever terminal brain disease is making you crave a bacon sundae is still yours to contend with.

What weirds me out most about this bacon extravaganza is not so much the fact that they've put a ghastly amount of bacon in a frankly irresponsible range of dishes (because I've given up on the American people's ability to think before they jam foodstuffs in their faceholes). It's the oddly classical name.

I'd love to see the pie chart (mmmm, pie) that shows what constituents of the "Denny's demographic" (or perhaps the "Dennygraphic" ... or maybe, "Fat Racists") think of when they hear the term Baconalia. Because that's what Denny's is calling this meaty madness.

It's a clear reference to Bachanalia - the ritualistic madness that seized devotees of Bacchus/Dionysus, and I just don't imagine a ton of Denny's eaters catching that. I don't mean that (entirely) as a harsh on folks who eat at Denny's but even among my friends who are over-educated pointy-head sorts, I'm not sure more than 50-60% would immediately get the reference.

I like to imagine some thwarted comp. lit. major sulking during an ad meeting. When the campaign manager winds up the meeting by asking, "Great, we've got the bacon sundae all squared away, what're we gonna call this thing?" our hero snorts quietly, almost to himself, "baconalia?"

And then Joe Manager replies, "sounds good," and a weirdly classical name is born for an ad campaign that makes literally no other reference to Pan, Bacchus, Dionysus or any other element of Greek or Roman mythology.

Wow it's been a while: Scuba, lawyers, frisbee

2010-05-25T18:41:00.000-07:00

It's been some time since I rapped at ya, but things are good in the nation's capital, at least for me: I'm renewing my lease, which is nice because it's a great place; My girlfriend and I are getting along swimmingly. We're young(ish) and in love(est) and all is super. Despite all the elapsed time, I still smile like a dork when I think of her. She's the keenest.

In other news, in my ongoing effort to become less boring as I get older I've taken up Ultimate Frisbee again and now play with a crowd of lawyers on Sundays. The effect so far is that I feel like I've been beaten up by a crowd of Huns come Monday, but I'm sure that will fade.

A week ago, Sunday, one of the tinier lawyers among them (thank God) and I crashed into one another at velocity. She must weigh about 100 lbs soaking wet with friends, but I now tip the scales at a (fat) manly 182 lbs of pure taught indolence.

As I hurtled towards her and realized we were going to collide like a Buick into a kitten, I did some back of the envelope calculations in the back of my head and realized I might kill someone.

And that someone would be a lawyer; and have lots of lawyer friends around to bear witness, provide testimony, do pro bono work on behalf of their dead friend's family and whatnot. The homicide would occur, I figured, either by me flattening and running blithely over her or by her ricochetting off me like so much ping pong matter off a bowling ball and landing in the nearby river.

So I grabbed her.

I figured I'd either pick her up and cradle her safely where no fat blokes were likely to run her down, or at least I'd stop her from bouncing off this mortal coil all willy nilly. I think it worked and that she was as uninjured as possible considering the kinetic energy involved. That said, all her forward momentum that wasn't used minutely stalling my onrush shot into the only unrestrained part of her body, her head, which translated it quite nicely, thank you very much, into my trachea via the small surface area of her nose and teeth.

My mom, who I told about it quite a lot later during Call To The Folks, gasped and pointed out, as though I were dragging my feet about getting a lump checked out, that I could have been killed. It's possible her diagnostic skills are getting rusty, because here I was talking to her on the phone, using my very own larynx and everything, hours later. It's nice to be loved though, honestly.

Still, I can't recommend taking a lawyer to the throat. It made me sound like Kathleen Turner for the better part of a week - so I was dead sexy - but it also made me feel as though I was coming down with something the entire time. Like a law suit.

Other efforts to remain hip and with it have been much safer despite happening under 5 to 10 feet of water. I just finished learning to Scuba (no longer SCUBA it seems). I'm not prepped to take my open water certification dives should the opportunity present itself in Brazil, where I'm going next month - with my awesome girlfriend. My life sounds so interesting, doesn't it.

The snowpocalypse is upon us!!!! Day 1

2010-02-05T12:43:00.000-08:00

It's going to snow in D.C.

Let that sink in for a sec ... now do what comes naturally:

RUN!!!!! Or, if you like, check out this link for tips on how to handle the snow in D.C.

Anyway, this is my journal of these trying times. For posterity. In case I don't come through the other side.

We have only ourselves to blame, as Fallwell will no doubt remind us later. The warning has been ample. We've known for days the frozen water that lives in the sky was planning an attack. As early as yesterday the grocery stores were mobbed with people stocking up in case they were TRAPPED INDOORS FOR AN ENTIRE WEEKEND!!

Luckily the government took courageous action and in an ingenious preemptive strike, planned to close and send people home well before we saw even the first snowflake. I was done with work at noon. I was already at home because I'd decided ahead of time that I would stay home in case (also because i was up late at a show). Nevertheless, the government's wise planning let me stop working at noon and start preparing for the worst.

I got a haircut. You never know how snow can change the outlook for personal grooming, so it's best not to tempt fate.

Coiffed, I slogged across half a block of concrete, through literally millimeters of snow, to the grocery store for cheese and bread, because I'm out. It was like Crate and Barrel meets Lord of the Flies. Lines of yuppies stretched down the aisles and an air of frantic anticipation stirred every sensible being to greedily clutch to themselves whatever foodstuffs might bring them any succor in the approaching blight.

I left. I'll get cheese on Monday or something. I did stop in at the local market for a turkey and Stilton sandwich though. Yummy. Still, the privation has clearly begun. They were out of raisins! A chill went through me. Barring some sort of miracle (or the fairly good possibility that my gf will find raisins on her way home) my oatmeal this weekend may be largely unadorned. The horror. The horror.

Clasping what little food I'd been able to snatch to my breast out of the fingers of fellow men made hollow and feral through anticipating their own doom, I scuttled back to my home and contemplated the horrors of facing so merciless a God as could unleash this unnatural tumult upon us. What invades my waking thoughts with nightmare is the unnatural temperature. A blizzard in such warmth defies every expectation. What sort of hurdy-gurdy blizzard is it when snow scarcely has the chance to settle before it vanishes like some phantom. My teeth are set a-chatter - though not from the cold obviously.

Ping Pong

2010-01-09T16:13:00.000-08:00

So here's how I feel about ping pong: It's awesome.

I started playing ping pong as a youth in my friend's basement, where his father and he would take turns kicking my ass. At the time I thought his dad was a jerk because he didn't play down to me at all. I later realized that he was a jerk for cheating on his wife with, get this, his secretary or grad student or some other conveniently available cliche. What a jerk.

However, his beating the tar out of me totally motivated me not to play like a child anymore. You may be aware from your own experience that most kids suck at most things. That's where the common phrase, "hey kid, gimme your lunch money" comes from. Kids suck at fighting for their lunch money.

My friend's jerkwad dad taught me that you should be able to smash the ball from below the level of the table and that you could put side-spin on the ball to mess with opponents.

For years this valuable knowledge lay irresponsibly unused. Then, one magical day, my friend Dirk and I got frustrated with work and decided to play ping pong in the gym at work instead. I assume we were frustrated by someone asking us to do an interesting task and then insisting we do it all fucked up. The odds are on my side if I remember correctly why we were usually pissed off.

We started playing ping pong regularly thereafter and a bunch of our friends joined in for three simple reasons:

It's awesome
It's super manly
Fuck you, it totally is.

The more complicated reason, and the one I'm a bit embarrassed to acknowledge is that ping pong is the onliest sport I ever get that "flow state" high in, the one where you know what's going to happen in two seconds and everything suddenly becomes really simple and natural. I'm convinced it has to do with learning what stimuli matter and what don't and focusing only on the important ones. But I don't (yet) have a PhD in psychology, so what do I know.

Well, Dirk and I were joined by Eug (who hits the ball harder than a human should), Courtney and Mark (two dudes from Jamaica who, no joke, played on their high school ping pong teams and are goddamn amazing and in Mark's case, sneaky and "teefin'"), Meredith and Cara (both of whom managed to maintain their graceful femininity despite playing what's widely regarded as the world's most testosteronatastic sport), Dennis (who thank God doesn't know that he's totally susceptible to any shot to his backhand with a little sidespin on it - Hi Dennis!), and a roster of other folk who came and went according to their interest and terms of employment.

At one point we had to know who was best, so we held the first ever Consumer Reports table-tennis league (I shit you not). The Jamaicans insist it's "table tennis", not "ping pong", but I maintain that in a very real sense you're hitting a tiny plastic ball over an adorably diminutive net so there's not much way to salvage that passtime by changing its name. Plus, who won the league play? Who? Me, the best "diminutive paddlewang" player at CR that year, that's who. I figure if you win you get to name it.

Anyway, the point of this dreadful ramble is that on Monday I'm going to a bar and playing ping pong. Sadly, I haven't yet decided if I'll be taking my own paddle. You read that right. I have my own paddle. In fact, I'll have to decide which of my paddle I'll take, if I take one. Playing with "hard bats" sucks.

I think we can all agree that the point of this post is that I'm pretty sweet.

Anyway, let me know in the comments if taking my own paddle is just sensible because it'll improve the quality of the play, or tremendously sad because ... well, you know.

The beginning of the year

2010-01-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

Hey there suckers, it's been a while since I rapped at you, in any real sense of the idea.

So, one of my resolutions this year was to write at least 10 minutes a day. So far, I'm succeeding splendidly if you replace "write 10 minutes a day" with "think about writing 10 minutes a day for at least 2 minutes a day".

I suck.

So today, before I go get a drink/dinner with my writer friend @fstockman, I'm going to write for another 9 minutes or so.

Here's what's up in the life of me:

I got me a girlfriend. She's plain awesome. Because she values her privacy, I'll call her Alphonse Dubai and let you know that she's a plumber from a video game. None of which is true.

If you're one of those people who knows me and reads this blog (like 99.9% of you), do the decent thing and don't mention her in the comments. She's got a reputation to uphold and I guess part of that includes not letting on to the nameless faceless mass of the Internet that she knows me, or exists, or what have you. I admit I've sort of lost track of what constitutes privacy any more, but I know she's none of your business.

Anywangle, I spent time with her over the holidays and it's made me a complete girl. I'm usually obtusely independent, but thanks to spending a great deal of time with her, I've become addicted to those crush hormones my body makes when she's around. Stupid endogenous whadyamacallums! Now I have to think about her all the time. It might be okay if our date yesterday had worked out, but I got about half an hour of her before she had to dash back to the videogame to plumb. Oh Alphonse! Sigh.

My attitude towards relationships has long been that you're not ready for a relationship if you need to be in a relationship. So now I feel both needy and apostate. Christ I suck.

On the plus side, my 10 minutes are up.

Couldn't sleep . . .

2010-01-05T21:26:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd write a quick post and turn in. Because, well, it's been ages since I wrote a damn thing.

So, I start off the new year with a good job, a simply wonderful girlfriend, and a house that looks like it was raped by a troupe (flock?) of methed out flying monkeys. Still, it's a great location, and you know what those folks in real estate say: "Don't live near flying monkeys, you jerk."

I'm getting to do more writing for my pal Helen over at MSNBC.com. Being nice to her was the best cold and calculating thing I've ever done, though I can't take too much credit for dastardly Machiavellian forward planning, since she's awesome and hilarious and fun and all that, and I've pretty much liked her since we worked together. She sends me Christmas cards with pictures of her pugs on them for Pugsake!!

Besides, if I were truly Machiavellian, would I be amping up my "writing career" just as writing is maturing into a dying art. The answer, my writerly friends, is "shut your hurtful faces. Shut 'em."

Okay, maybe that'll prime the blogging pump for the rest of this year. It certainly convinced me I need to get some sleep.

Also, am I the last guy to see auto-tune the news? Super funny.

I don't know if any of you have seen this ...

2009-10-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

But recently Meghan McCain uploaded a picture that set the conservative Twittersphere on fire. I'll put the picture in just ... here:

So, take that in if you would.

She posted it, ostensibly because she was hanging out at home on a Saturday night and reading a Warhol biography. Also, if you look very closely, you'll see she has breasts.

The twitter/internet response was INSANE. On the fairly liberal and male Digg.com, which is to the Internet what behind the Stop 'n Sip is to the Midwest, the reaction had a "stupid conservative floozy"/"I'd put my dick in that" inflection. There will always be kids on the Internet, I guess.

All she's doing in this picture is showing off a book and having breasts. Ogling her is fine if you do it in the comfort of your own home and don't give public voice to the notion that chicks are first and foremost for ogling. It's the difference between saying "that woman who reads has intriguing breasts," and, "thank god the breasts partially obscured by that book had a woman to ride into the frame of this picture on!" You see the difference?

Also, calling a conservative a whore for being sexy is missing the point of social liberalism you jackasses. You can't turn conservatives' own punitive worldview on them when they demonstrate sexiness, because it's not them we're fighting, you jerks, it's their worldview.

Speaking of the conservative response, the worst comment I've seen so far is this:
"You knew you were posting a nearly NSFW [not safe for work] photo, so don't pretend like you're surprised at people's reaction,"

NSFW is probably a useful notion, because it stops you from opening up a picture that might create a "hostile work environment" for some people. Who those people are is generally implicit in your culture's notions of decency. The idea of "nearly NSFW" is looney.

It's not as though the person sending something labled "NSFW" is saying - "don't look at this filth!" They're saying, look at this filth later, when only consulting adults are around. Nearly NSFW, or NNSFW, just means "NSFW if there are a lot of prudes around". I'm offended by NNSFW because it's retrogressive. It suggests we're not being prudish enough yet.

I think we already do a number on women's self-image by insisting that female sexuality is somehow irreconcilable with brains or seriousness. Just because boobs make us guys momentarily stupid and licentious doesn't mean we should project those characteristics on their owners. So, hey conservatives, quit it! We don't need to go any further backwards on this.

Watch this space

2009-10-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

There's talk about maybe a new article being published.

The Internet will hate me for it, so that'll be exciting. I'll post a link from here when it's up.

If you're in D.C. ...

2009-10-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

... and can go see Psychosis 4.48 performed by Factory 449 ...

Don't.

It's terrible. I was reminded of Dorothy Parker saying of Katherine Hepburn, "she runs the gamut of emotions from A to B".

If the essential question of the play was "how does suicide arise from depression" then the director's answer seems to be delivered by asking the actors to "play crazy to the hilt!" Yeah, crazy! That's the ticket. It strikes me as odd that out of 10 actors and a director none seemed to have any experience with sadness or considering suicide. Did they all miss high school?

Anyway, don't go see it. I've already invested more emotion in this review than I felt throughout the whole play.

You must be effing kidding me

2009-10-15T14:46:00.000-07:00

Decrying the lows to which movie studios will sink is a pastime that could quickly eat up all your time for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, I've gotta say something about this crap:

http://thebox-movie.warnerbros.com/

I guess it's based on a short story, but that short story is based on a moral dilemma. What's next, "The Woman or the Painting", "To Steal Medicine for Your Sick Mother or Not!"?

Try harder Hollywood. Try. Harder.

I'm probably dying ...

2009-10-14T20:53:00.001-07:00

... of hand.

I have to go get an MRI of a lump in my hand. I don't really think it's a big deal, but you know better safe than something or other.

I've always tried not to worry until worrying does some good. Often I try not to worry even after it's demonstrably a good time to freak the hell out. However, I'm worried now, not so much about the fact that I'm almost certainly about to die of the nations 1Mth most dangerous killer - hand gophers! - but because I'm scheduled for an MRI ... with contrast.

I've never had an MRI of any sort, - with contrast, with bananas, or with a happy ending. However, I was with a woman who was toughing it out while passing a kidney stone once.

Wait, I'm tying it back to the story.

She's a certifiable bad-ass. I expect Chuck Norris couldn't pass a kidney stone without at least tearing up, but this ole girl sure did. I've never developed so much respect for a person in one nighttime.

And stay up all night with her I did, trying to help her navigate the medical system - (which blows in this country btw, and I'm not just saying that; seriously, travel to other countries before you decide the USA is still the best at anything). The only thing that almost caused our heroine to give up and just walk out of the hospital, while still suffering from an undiagnosed pain that most people who've been through both describe as worse than childbirth, was when the doctor threatened a second MRI with contrast.

I had to physically restrain the steely old bird and I think I only managed that because she was already in dire scalding pain.

I'm horrified. It's like going into the hospital with a broadsword up your urethra, but being like, you know, resigned to it, then deciding that this one test is just too much to bear.

I'm not even worried about MRIs in general. Some people get tetchy about them because you have/get to get inside a huge metal tube. I, of course, will be pretending I'm being fitted for a robo-exoskeleton, so no worries there. I'm also not really claustrophobic.

Some people whine because they're loud. So are robot battle suits you pansies.

No, I'm whining because apparently adding the words "with contrast" means they inject hot magma into your arm or something and somehow that's less comfortable than passing a shard of uric acid through the most minute and tender plumbing of your amazingly gentle bits.

In the immortal words of a that cell-phone abusing whalebird, Twitter, "FML".

Anecdote 1

2009-10-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

Er, I think you'll find that's a katana. Jeez.

I was leaving work for lunch yesterday and who should get on the elevator but a woman dressed in business attire, but, you know, carrying a broadsword (of course it was a broadsword - I didn't play all that D&D for nothing you know).

She was carrying it without the least self-consciousness - until I said out loud to my friend "is she carrying a broadsword?" Then she sort of turned away from my friend a bit.

Best of all, in direct compliance with my prayers, she did in fact get off the elevator on the floor where I work. Unfortunately she went to the right instead of the left, suggesting she works for the law firm over there.

I'm baffled, I admit.

Fuck

2009-10-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

This somehow feels even more weirdly violating than that whole Tesh thing.

http://danielharrisonband.com/default.aspx

I'm sure he's totally nice and stuff, and I know I'm not totally fair in my distrust of folks who are zealous about anything, particularly religion, but sheesh!

I'm pooped

2009-10-03T19:09:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've had about 10 hours of sleep out of the last 54, but that's only because it's true.

I'm about an hour from trippy lucid-daydream hallucinations I think, so I might stay up just for that. I also want to start using my Google Wave account, but I found it confusing enough without being wrecked on wakefulness, so I might put that off til later.

Oh, the hallucinations have started early. My totem unicorn tells me it's time to go iron some shirts for next week. He's very concerned I look good for work.

My age

2009-10-01T17:55:00.000-07:00

A coworker today underestimated my age by at least six years. While that's awesome for me, it's going to be even funnier for certain members of my family.

That's because I forgot to mention that my sister, who lives locally and is 4 years younger (plus smarter and probably wealthier) than I (just like her twin, incidentally), has been mistaken for my older sister a couple of times recently.

I don't think I want to make too much of it, because probably the reason has more to do with my actions than how we each look. Still, as a proper older brother, I will make fun. Of course, she's married, has a career she likes, and has her crap together, so whatever.

Could all you non-family and friends avert your eyes for a sec?

2009-09-16T21:47:00.001-07:00

Okay, now they're distracted, I feel I should let my pals know I'm really happy. Everything's coming up Daniel recently.

I know I'm usually a marginally optimistic cynic who glosses over the fundamental meaninglessness of life with a palaver of wry fart jokes and girlie-drinks, but due to a couple of strokes of really good luck recently I'm just psyched all day. It's embarrassing.

That is all.

Insomnia?

2009-09-08T01:27:00.000-07:00

I haven't had insomnia in ages, but if you could check the time of this post you'd note that either I'm taking a very ambitious and optimistic line on Tuesday or I'm awake at a simply stupid hour of the day.

Seriously, I was only vaguely aware that a 4:30 AM even existed. I thought maybe it was a story concocted to frighten children, like the chupecabra or libertarians.

I'd like to think I'm awake because of excitement over either my job search or my burgeoning romantic life, but if I'm honest, I think the positive developments in both those areas would lull me to sleep like a big somnolent baby. I haven't a clue why I'm still awake.

Sure, some of you will say, why did you wash down a pitcher of margaritas with a latte at 10:00 PM? To you I say, "for America!" Also, "hush. No one likes a smart alec."

Actually, I won't take any guff about my eating habits, since I learned today, after swanning around in a hot tub at the Marriott where my friend is staying and then using their balance scale, that my curious "unemployment diet", which seems to include incautious beverage choices and a plenitude of cheese sandwiches at irregular hours, is causing me to lose weight. I'm back down to what I weighed in college, so that's fun.

Maybe my weight has tricked my brain into keeping college hours, which I recall totally sucked.

Anyway, I've put the "bonus" awake-time to marginal use by killing a (preposterously large) cave cricket. The trick, it turns out, is to move slowly, not quickly - just like the knife fights in the confusing movie adaptation of Dune where Captain Picard tries to teach Kyle MacLachlin to kill Sting in slo-mo and a floating dirigible of a fat dude with weeping sores gives me nightmares for a week (0r something). You know the one.

In cricket updates, I'm becoming inured to the horrible little bastards ... though I still kill them with a distressing relish, considering their only crime is being frankly hideous.

Don't give me that look! I was unpopular in high school too, so don't you dare go taking the side of the ugly misunderstood crickets. If there were goth emo stoners lurching around your basement in the middle of the night, hiding under the fridge, and leaping at you when you went to take a slash, you'd whack them with rolled up copies of Rolling Stone too, whether you listen to Tool or not. I'm fairly certain Robert Smith would approve. Morrissey of course would be disdainful and quietly maudlin about it.

Okay, I'm going to try this whole sleeping thing again.

WTF?

2009-09-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

Since when did Whiskey Tango Foxtrot become an acceptable lengthening of WTF? It's longer than the original phrase (which is "what the f***" ... which is actually "what the fuck" for those of you not frightened by words, and "what the fundoodle" for those of you who are).

I heard a guy on NPR use it, and I think he was a colonel in the U.S. army. I wasn't paying attention, so he might have been a janitor at the Quickee Mart, but he was probably someone of some import to be a guest on NPR.

That is all.

Oh Holy Christ on a Cricket!

2009-08-21T08:41:00.001-07:00

I've seen the face of evil, and it's a cave cricket.
That ugly bastard up there lives in my apartment. They're relatively harmless except that every time you see one on your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, a tiny portion of your soul shrivels up in horror.

They don't chirp. They don't (thank God!) bite. And in fact, they don't seem to do much at all. They do move like lightning when you go to squish them though. Fair enough, I guess. I'd move too if I were being squished.

However, they look like a cross between a cricket and a hairy spider - which, in case you're interested, is actually the recipe for unadulterated evil. They look just wrong and I hate them.

Apparently you can get rid of them with caulking and maybe an exorcism.

What's a blog?

2009-08-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

So I got a question from a loyal reader and family-member that went along the lines of "what the hell's this 'blogging' thing all about anyway?"

Obviously, she's reading this blog, so she's at least vaguely aware, but it's true that the term blog gets used a lot to mean similar, but subtly different things. I thought I'd take a shot at answering the question here.

It's a technology:
When I worked for the uninitiated, their conflation of the technology with the trend was the hardest part to get around. At its most basic, a blog is some code on a server that makes it easy to publish chronologically ordered articles on a web site.

Generally there are a couple of screens for writing, editing, and managing the "posts", and it's all set up so that you don't have to know an <i> tag from an <em> tag to do anything.

A user writes a post or two, publishes them, and sends a link to friends. When the friend shows up to the main blog page, they see a list of all posts from most recent to oldest. Clicking on any post's title takes you to a "permalink", which is a fancy way of saying "a page with just one post on it". Generally, comments about a post live on the post's permalink page.

It's important to separate the tech from the phenomenon, because you could use blogging software to publish stuff that wouldn't really qualify as a blog. Anything it makes sense to publish in chronological order will do. Daily sports results would work fine, but they wouldn't set CNN on its ear as Bloggers have.

It's a phenomenon:
Any jackass can publish anything. Look at me for instance.

It's important to note that "anyone" includes Fortune 500 companies as well as schizophrenics and hobos. Who publishes and why has a distinct impact on the blog's reach and content. The fact that anyone can publish means a lot of people have, so there's a wide variety of blogs out there. However, most of them, certainly the ones you hear about, have fallen into a few categories ....

Friends and family blogs, like this one, are good for people who are far from loved ones, are crap at writing letters, but want to keep folks apprised of what's up in their lives. Basically it's stuff I want people I know to hear from me.

Diary blogs are about people's cats and are narcissistic in the extreme. No one cares about your cat! Focusing on the fact that your readers (if they exist) are people, not the ether, should turn a diary blog into a friends and family blog.

Corporate blogs, are a mixed bag. Sometimes a CEO is blathering on about whatever comes to mind. Other times, a blog is part of a larger web-site and deals with specific issues. An example of the latter would be any of a number of Consumer Reports' blogs (e.g.: http://blogs.consumerreports.org/electronics/)

Pro Blogs are sites that started as blogs and became proper publications. Imagine a broadsheet turned into a proper paper and you've got the idea. Blogs like engadget and gizmodo are examples.

They have no non-blog presence, like CR does, but they command a big audience. They're what all the fuss is about when people talk about blogging. They are also what aspiring bloggers are aiming to be when they start their puny little humor blogs. Ahem.

A lot of new publications recently have taken this form simply because blogging software is easy to come by and convenient to use.

RSS
RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and is confusing to most people.

It is basically a way for a user to find out when there are new posts on a blog you like. It's a bit more involved on the publisher's side because RSS is a format you can use to package up all your content so it can be used and displayed elsewhere. This "atomization" of content has had a lot of impact on the Web because, by providing a standard, RSS has made it easy for one site to seamlessly integrate content from other places on the Web.

From the user's end, you usually see images like this: . When you click on them (this one's inert, but try at the bottom of the main page), your browser or some other program like your blog reader, or sometimes Outlook or another email program (I understand) will help you pull updates about a blog into a spot where it's convenient for you to read up on them.

Twitter?
Twitter started as a "micro-blogging" platform, which meant you had to keep your posts to 140 characters or less. Twitter's too much to get into here, because functionality not found on most blogs altered the way people interact with it so it's no longer just a micro-blogging tool.

On owning a cafe that offers wifi

2009-08-18T10:28:00.001-07:00

Does anyone know if there's a device or program you could use to alert you when your wifi is down? I guess you'd need a bit of software on your wifi enabled smartphone trying to access the internet - but only via the wifi. It would buzz if it couldn't, thereby alerting you that your local wifi was hosed.

Someone needs to build this device or software for cafe owners. Failed wifi is becoming the number-one reason I won't go back to cafes now, which sounds lame, but every cafe offers coffee and tables. Besides, nothing pisses you off at a cafe like losing Internet and not knowing when/if it's coming back.

Doug, build this and we'll be rich I tell you!

Oh Double Snap, My New Article

2009-08-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

Some people (Jessica) never pick up their damn phones; Other people (Lynda) text while people are talking with them; And yet other people (me) noodle way too much on their iPhones.

If this stuff honks you off as much as it does me, you should probably look at (and vote for) my article on MSNBC, 10 smartphone tips for dumb people.

There, now everyone's happy.

Oh Snap! My Article

2009-08-07T23:54:00.000-07:00

I twooted it, and emailed some of you, but I forgot to mention here on my blog that I had another piece published by MSNBC.com.

This one is about my turbulent relationship with my iPhone. I've already been taken to task over it by people who feel like I'm a sexist who hates autistic kids, so no need to comment further on those points, thanks. (The criticisms were actually helpful. I'm not just being glib here.)

It's over here "jump-linked" on your Internet box.

There may be another piece some time next week which I'll be less feckless about bringing to your attention(s?).

Digits

2009-08-07T22:52:00.001-07:00

I met someone at a bar tonight, and I kind of have a crush.

For this to make sense as a blog post, you have to understand that I'm terrible, like apocalyptically terrible, at picking people up at bars ... or clubs ... or, well let's not varnish a turd, anywhere. I'm awful at it. There are middle-schoolers with more game than yours truly. I'm fine in a relationship, and I'm not awful at meeting or even attracting women, but I'm more of the friend-of-a-friend, someone-you-know-from-a-group, kind of guy. I fail at bars.

That's a large part of why I met this woman through the happy expedient of finding my friend talking to her and her buddy when I returned from buying said friend and myself drinks at the bar of a hip D.C. establishment. She'd struck up a conversation with two women standing nearby and was engaged in a lively conversation. I was in awe. Surely it's not that easy. What does one open with? That's not even the set-up for a joke. I suck at this.

No joke, I'm congenitally awful at this game and lack any sort of meaningful practice.

I'd heard that women make the best wing-men and sort of stored it away academically, like the fact that the temperature of the Sun's surface is 5,778 Kelvin, but now I can confirm they are at least WAY better than I am. Which is sort of like being able to dunk over Vern Troyer, but whatever.

We four chatted, and then I found myself having a side-conversation with just one of these delightful women. I'd known going in that she was stylish and attractive, but she turned out to be funny, thoughtful, and smart as well. We talked about the law (her vocation), Hannah Arendt and her observations of the banality of evil at Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem (like you do; shut up!), Roller-derby, and emotional manipulation (because I'm awesome at flirting at bars, as I've already made abundantly clear). I managed not to overhype myself as I'm aware some guys do, nor to say anything too goddawful stupid - a pitfall for me at the best of times.

The feedback was good, with the proper looks, the appropriate laughs, the slightly-too-slowly-averted eyes and so forth.

So when it came time to go, I understand you're supposed to ask for a number or something? Did I, you might ask. To which I have to ask, have you not been paying attention? No. Of course I didn't. I'm a goddamned monkey. Did she follow us out and give it to me anyway? Yes, yes she did. Thank Christ.

Now I have to find a way to tell her I have no job, or I guess, find a job. And before you chime in with helpful/hurtful advice, let me agree that with that first paycheck from my new job I should and will buy myself some goddamn balls.

Anyway, the other important part of this post for those who know me is that I have a legit crush and attraction to this woman I just met.

I was actually wondering recently why I haven't had a really crazy crush for a long while (because actually I am neurotic ... and a girl). Part of it has to do with who I've met, but I think really it comes down to this: It's hard to have a crush on someone you know too well. When you meet people through friends you often know too much about them.

The crush, in many ways, is you projecting your idealized version of someone onto a relatively blank canvas and getting psyched. If you already know them too well you can't get too excited because you already know they hate the poor or were confused by The Usual Suspects or believe in astrology or whatever.

Anyway, I'm psyched at the very least for the crush while it lasts. As for "next steps", I believe I'm supposed to call her and propose a sensible date or something.

I'm fucked.

Yay! Redundant.

2009-07-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

Look, up in the sky, is it a bird? Is it a sausage? No, it's Daniel! Good grief, why is it Daniel?

I got made redundant the other day, which isn't nearly as bad as it sounds, since I kind of hated my job for a number of reasons. I really liked some of the folk I worked with, but some made my teeth itch.

So I'm "flying without a net" now, and looking for a new gig. Not sure what area I'm looking in, since I'm now interested in project management, writing, coding, and this whole "social media" thing. Also, obviously, trapeze.

The picture above and the video below were shot a couple of weeks ago when I went to the TSNY installation here in D.C.

This is my first go at doing trapezery, which is a word I just made up.

What a smart person thinks about Boomers

2009-04-22T05:58:00.000-07:00

Friend and reader, Doug, made this comment to my last post. He's generally cleverer than I am, so here are his thoughts where you don't have to go hunting for them in the comments. Thanks Doug:

When we were growing up, every significant milestone in the Boomers' life was heralded on the cover of Time magazine -- Boomers Turn 40, Boomers Return to Church, Boomers Breed, Boomers Retirement Coming Soon, etc. It seemed to wither up after that last one and I have a theory about this: The Boomers' retirement means that they no longer holding the senior editorial positions in the mass media any more.

My theory extends to the younger years of the Boomers' lives as well -- The Beatles, Vietnam, Woodstock and the rise and fall of Disco. In that era it was the parents of the Boomers who shaped the message of the media and they were just so proud that they had to write about their kids. That is only natural, I love to write about my kids as well. The difference is that these parents (aka The Greatest Generation) bred en masse and this boom had a significant impact on the demographics of the country, therefore it was extra special.

This trend will continue past the retirement of Boomers and likely always will. When our generation ("X") got a few years beyond college, we made our mark. The alt rock of our high school years became mainstream. We embraced the Internet and the changed the definition of "mass media". The kids graduating from high school in 2009 will do the same thing in about ten years.

So, I don't share the vindictive attitude toward the Me Generation, I view what they did and what happened as a consequence as inevitable. The demise of their influence is also inevitable -- and quite welcome as well.

As for marketing a radio station to them in 2009, I think it's a bit crazy. If we're talking about terrestrial radio, it's a dying medium aimed at a demographic beyond their prime earning years in an era when the economy has shifted people away from raw consumerism. If it's not terrestrial radio, you're pushing new media to a group that is well behind the curve on the adoption of Internet or satellite radio. Good luck with that.

I think my comment is now longer than your original post. You seem to have struck a nerve.

Boomers

2009-04-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

Someone I admire and respect works a great deal as an entrepreneuse in the Boomer market. A recent tweet from her asked for advice about what to feature on an upcoming boomer radio station, and that raised a bit of a conflict for me.

My first reaction to Boomers is "fuck those guys".

It's probably wrong, but from my perspective Boomers are the generation that occurred between my parent's and mine, fucked up health care and education for my generation, and occasionally have the temerity to call my generation slackers.

I don't believe it about all Boomers, but whenever I'm asked to consider the group as a whole, my reaction is "fuck the 'me' generation".

Anyone else out there have a similar reaction, or know a good way for me to recast this crowd of self-involved hypocrites (joke) in a more positive light?

Seriously? Not a single comment on the chinchillas?

2009-04-04T10:41:00.000-07:00

I thought that rant was hilarious. I don't even need to read it really. Just a gander at the snooty, unsuspecting chinchillas is enough to set me off.

Oh well.

So, you know how some weeks you really get a lot done at work, clear up the clutter in your inbox and manage to sort out the blueprints that'll lay the groundwork for the rest of your career? Yeah, me neither.

On the plus side, I did buy an attractive hat. In the other column though, it's the kind of hat you can only get away with wearing if you're particularly hip and, more-to-the-point, not lugging an extra 10 pounds of girth about just in case of emergency (like in case I retrospectively realize I really DID want that pound of cheese I ate last night).

You can't be too careful.

iGala

2009-03-30T19:31:00.000-07:00

A little while back I asked a bunch of friends, and twitter-friends, and woodland fauna and just whoever to send pictures to my living room via the geeky expedient of my magic new internet-attached digital frame. You hipsters succeeded like gang-busters, so here's an update on this ongoing experiment - in review form.

I don't have much use for digital frames, because who in the world ever rotates the pics on them? Plus, if you want pics you didn't take yourself, you have to cart them back and forth through the sneakernet with your own wee flash card - which we all know is a pernicious choking hazard looking all candylicious and technically alluring and such - and, plus, I have better things to pretend to do like understand the tax code, master thighs, withstand peer-pressure or look at pictures of my friend's goofy-ass babies ... er no, not your baby, that other friend's.

Oh, yeah, pictures! Anyway, what sets the frame I got, a shiny iGala, apart from the run-of-the-mill trash from Best Buy is that with a little complicity from your friends, new pictures are beamed by wifi directly into the frame from such convenient sources as Flickr and gmail.

In fact, if you want me to see your pics, go ahead and send them to photos4daniel@gmail.com. I'd love to look at them. Note, I'm not easily offended, but be forewarned that sending me gross and/or pornographic pictures just occurred to everyone else who read this, so it's not even clever no more. I just ask that the pics be a bit interesting, and that if you're at all nekid in them, you try to be correspondingly attractive.

So, the review is that I'm loving it. The frame has its little quirks, and the icons on the user interface are just inscrutable. Luckily they're quite easy to memorize.

Set-up was easy for someone as clever, technical and well-dressed as myself, but as a gift for grandma it might need to be accompanied by fifteen minutes of on-site tech support to get the wifi sorted. The transitions from pic to pic look like they were imported in bulk right from 1980's cinema but whatever, they're still gonna be goddamn astounding to gramps, right? He still has a VCR and it's still perpetually noon at his house.

I've had my frame running for a bit over a week now and I occasionally laugh out loud or get misty at the pics my awesome friends have sent me. On the off chance that you've chosen friends who suck, you can always subscribe to a Flickr group and pretend those people are your friends.

You poor sad monkey.

Aaaaaaw crap!

2009-03-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

My butt is so furious at the environment right now!

Is nothing sacred?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america

Apparently, if it's the least bit fun or pleasant it will either kill you stone dead or wreck the world for your children. Soft toilet paper is worse for the environment than Hummers?

I have to presume that's partly because not everyone puts a Hummer underneath themself a few times a week.

So everything good is bad. Sex, if it isn't just complicating relationships, increases unwanted exposure to herpes, crabs, back-ache, the HPV, the HIV and, in particular worst-case scenarios, the FBI.

Cigarettes cause lung cancer; Drink causes fights, cirrhosis, and unwise 2 AM shouts/chats at/with people best left uncalled; And weed, it turns out, after lying to us about being totally blameless and all mis-characterized and whatnot by administrations Nixon through W, causes ball-cancer.

Delicious food makes you fat; And wine, eggs, butter and olive oil can't seem to make up their goddamn minds what's up, thereby raising blood pressure and generalized angst about the whole mess.

Don't you dare console yourself with a goddamn carbohydrate! Don't you dare!

And as we should probably expect by now, what we put in ourselves is only half the problem. We're also wrecking the world when that crap (quite literally) comes out the other end. Did you want to nurture and pamper your bum with a soft toilet tissue? Did you want to enjoy a brief, private respite from the abrasive vicissitudes of life while you're at your most unguarded and vulnerable? Oh! You did?

Well why don't you just go skull-fuck the Lorax while you're in such a festive, feckless mood, you filthy monster!?!?! Turns out it's all the same in the end.

Christ, what next? Cuddling with your children gives puppies buboes? Lollipops foment civil unrest in Indonesia? You know what caused the worldwide financial meltdown? You did. By enjoying a sunset, you insensitive jerk.

Adorable. Expendable!
img from vociferous

Life can suck it! If I can't poop in comfort without being the Devil, I don't see why we shouldn't just cut to the chase and strip mine ANWR with an ICBM, just you know, for the spectacle.

If it's all the same to the Universe, I'm going to start wiping my ass with chinchillas from here on out and be done with it.

They look soft at least.

Also, there's this, which by contrast is rollicksome tragicomedy: http://ecoworldly.com/2009/02/26/extremely-rare-bird-photographed-for-first-time-then-eaten/

Writing about stuff makes you healthier?

2009-03-02T19:25:00.000-08:00

This (pdf) article suggests that writing a little bit each day about emotional stuff should make you feel physically better.

I knew there was a good reason to be a writer (or self-absorbed blogger)! Just ask Franz Kafka or Sylvia Plath.

I'm not sure what the mechanism is. I have to re-read the article, which I hardly even skimmed the first time. I sometimes think that shoe-horning the miserable jumble of stimuli that constitute real life into some sort of meaningful narrative may be enough to make you feel not only like you understand what's going on, but as though it has some meaning. That's probably enough to make you a bit more chipper and lower your blood pressure, I guess.

Meanwhile, in DH news, I'm still looking for a place to buy or rent in DC (have to start applying for mortgage loans tomorrow if I want to buy), I'm trying to write more - though more for my career's well-being than my body's, and I'm coding my ass off in order to get giftgaff looking all pretty and awesome. End of this weekend or I'm going to kick my own ass.

I'm totally old

2009-02-16T06:29:00.001-08:00

Did anyone leave a midlife crisis at my place? Oh wait, maybe it's mine. :)

I gotta think about my personal brand?

2009-02-08T20:35:00.001-08:00

Just writing that sort of jargony bullshit makes me want to kick my own ass. However, this blog for friends and family isn't ever going to help me retire early.

If I want to capitalize on my inchoate success as a writer, smart-ass, and techno-commentator, I'll need a better name and a more focused "brand".

I'm thinking about it, but I'd appreciate any sort of feedback. If there's stuff you enjoy hearing about from me or you could see yourself telling a friend, "Hey, Daniel's posts are good for x but kind of lackluster when they're about y", let me know.

In a related note, I can't believe we've reached a stage in our cultural development where I'm talking seriously about my personal brand and how best to "leverage" it (leverage means "use", but fancier). It's like I opened my eyes one day and woke up in a cyber-punk satire, but then instead of getting an adventure I had to shower and go to work and worry about my credit score and paying bills.

Did John Tesh rewrite my article?

2009-02-08T10:21:00.000-08:00

I sort of promised that I'd shut up about my article on jerk-gadgets, but I found this link last night that I hope you'll forgive me for sharing.

It looks like John Tesh, or someone associated with Tesh.com found my article, excerpted parts, and made them yet safer for a family audience.

I honestly don't know how one should feel about it. It's so curious.

Have a look for yourself:
http://www.tesh.com/ittrium/visit?path=A1x97x1y1xa5x1x76y1x243dx1x9by1x2442x1y5x19c28x5x1

Meanwhile, on the topic of Tesh, this Brandon Bird picture cracks me up every single time I look at it. You should go check out his other art as well. It'll mess with your head.

More the little red engine than sisyphus, I hope.

2009-02-07T18:03:00.001-08:00

Sometimes, during the deep of the night, I'll consider my life and make sad, musical harumphing sounds like a plaintive Scandinavian walrus. In the last year and a half or so, I've had some setbacks. My salary rose sharply, then dropped precipitously. I saw the end of a relationship I thought had a lot of potential, and I moved from NYC to Reston-goddamned-Virginia.

Very recently my salary rose again (from 0, but not to earlier heights I'm afraid) and now I'm getting the hell out of Reston and back into a town where there is stuff to do. I'm hoping that this marks the upswing of various trajectories of my life rather than the valley of a sine wave, but I guess we'll have to wait to see. If I can just get my business off the ground, figure out the details of my plan to save investigative journalism, and find a smart, hot, interesting woman to date, I'll be grand.

If I can't make that happen in the coming year, I'm taking my money, moving to Cuba and really leaning in to a dotage of dissolution, drink and decay. Ole.

Moving to D.C.

2009-02-07T17:56:00.000-08:00

Let me just say that Craigslist works like a charm. Holy cats!

Maybe it's because the last time I looked for an apartment I was living in NYC (where I recently, no joke, saw a Craigslist listing where someone was willing to sublet their bathroom for someone to live in - as long as they got out when the owner needed to use it), but this process seemed crazy easy. I started looking up apartments yesterday and by this morning I'd seen two places I'd consider moving into on Monday.

I have a handful more to see tomorrow, but I'm happy with the ones I've seen thus far, so I'll probably be a D.C. native by two weeks from now. I can move stuff slowly, because I have to give my current landlord some notice.

I guess I could wait and find a place in a month (since craigslist seems to work so well), but I hate Reston as you already know. More than I hate Reston though, I loathe my commute with the fiery intensity of 10 billion white-hot suns. I'm moving sharpish.

--- UPDATE ---
Fuck Craig and his list. I found a place through a friend. Yay!

Oh no! We might have to learn to amuse ourselfes!

2009-02-07T05:43:00.000-08:00

Clearly someone at the FCC made an error when thinking about the change to digital TV. Apparently even with the required converter box, lots of TVs show crappy pixelated pictures.

Obviously, folks who have been happily paying nothing for TV and getting fair pictures for years are going to be perturbed. Still, the tone of the complaints makes it sound like the government is cutting off water.

I'm no "Kill your TV" guy, but seriously, it's just TV. Listen to your radio for news then go outside and run and jump and skip and play. TV mostly disappoints after all, doesn't it?

I am a slow-ass writer

2009-01-31T11:34:00.000-08:00

This weekend has been largely written-off to proper work. A project I was working on sort of as a lark became increasingly important as it evolved, so now I'm working on the weekend to get it ready by Monday.

At the same time, as long as I'm spending a great deal more time close to home than I'd anticipated, I'm also catching up on some writing I owe MSNBC. My clever friend at MSNBC talked about how they pay pretty well for freelance stuff, but I'm starting to think that's because she can write witty stuff in about a tenth the time it takes me. I've been laboring over this piece for ages and I'm still not happy with it.

I guess I'll continue to rely on coding to earn my keep - at least until I can write an interesting piece in 4 hours and be assured of more demand.

Going snowboarding

2009-01-18T05:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm headed up to Whitetail today for some snowboarding and reflection.

I hope not to freeze, and I hope to get back in time to finish some work. Still, skipping it isn't an option yet.

Ah the new year

2009-01-07T19:12:00.000-08:00

Well, I went to MI and passed a great xmas with the family. New Years was spent in Boston with some buddies, a couple of whom I'm working with on GiftGaff. (Hi guys! The code's coming along nicely and I'm right now avoiding it for a moment because all the PHP errors have me down ever since I turned them on to root out whatever's eating a whole chunk of page). It was good to see everyone face to face, especially including Eric and Erica my hosts.

The only bummer was being literally the only single straight person at the party at the stroke of midnight. It might have been worse to be the only single gay guy though, so perhaps I didn't get the worst of it.

I started a job on Monday and it's in Annapolis which might almost just as well be Pluto for the commute. Jesus. Christ. The new commute, among other things, is finally turning me into a full-on misanthrope. Look, the rules are, you drive on the right until you come up on someone going slower in front of you. Then you move to the left and pass. If there's no one to your right, you go back the hell over there. Rinse and repeat.

If we all do it, the emergent property might be that I get to goddamned work without having an embolism so urgent I choke on it. Also, your signals inform people where you're driving your stupid car. It's not goddamned rocket surgery.

On the plus side, it's been raining to fill the pound lo these last couple of days and commuters' common sense seems to be made of spun sugar. No, wait, on the plus side, when I did get to work today, I learned about some neat-o technologies for using twitter. How neat-o? Perhaps neat-o enough to make me want to use it more. That's pretty good really. Soon all my (not very many) followers will get twitter spam from some magpie jerks.

If nothing from that previous paragraph save the oblique reference to raining cats and dogs made sense to you, count yourself lucky. Seriously, I'm becoming a carpenter or an ascetic or something. I can see the appeal to going offline altogether. Maybe I'll just walk the Earth like Caine from Kung-Fu. I do, after all, know kung-fu, which is more than could be said for David Carradine when he did the show.

Okay, back to coding and then to bed so I can wake up an hour ago to assure a manageable commute.

Home for the holidays

2008-12-23T21:04:00.000-08:00

Drove from D.C. to MI today. Didn't get nearly as much reading on PHP done as I would have liked, but did just finish installing Apache, MySQL, and PHP on my laptop.

Still have to enable PHP extensions in the config file of the server and set up some virtual hosts. If I remember correctly, that means finding or creating a host file somewhere in my computer. And, er, sacrificing a virgin?

I'm glad to know how to do all this stuff, but I'm thinking perhaps I should learn about sports or something so I can talk to people. :)

Either way, I'm pooped. It's nice to be surrounded by family. Here's hoping T-- gets in okay tomorrow from the West coast.

My oddest impulse purchase to date

2008-12-22T11:36:00.001-08:00

I saw this as I was checking out of Best Buy today.

Hi, welcome to my wassailing party. Oh, look, is that mistletoe you're standing under? I guess we should get it on.

Someone had discarded it on a shelf and I picked it up to see what it was. Clearly I couldn't put it down, just in case.

It turns out that most of the songs are delivered pretty straight, although God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen might be my new favorite song ever. With Idol's growl it sounds subversively aggressive.

A remembrance of things buttery

2008-12-20T18:50:00.000-08:00

Today for breakfast I enjoyed a large cuppa tea and milk accompanied by two honest-to-God crumpets. The crumpets were vectors for a simply irresponsible quantity of butter and a much more carefully controlled dose of Marmite.

Marmite, for the uninitiated, is a bread-spread made from the yeasty detritus left over after brewing has been done. If I'm honest, it doesn't taste even so palatable as that description might lead you to expect. It's sort of like salty tar. If you grew up on it though, it's heaven.

Marmite's been easy to come by for years in the U.S., but I had no idea how close I lived to proper crumpets. Trader Joe's crumpets are the real thing. The first bite took me right back to my childhood in London and almost erased the trauma I suffered from biting into my first "English" muffin.

Thank you Trader Joe's.

I took the job

2008-12-18T06:43:00.000-08:00

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Drink Britannia!

2008-12-17T08:03:00.000-08:00

This is a little out of date, but last week Monday I went with my friend to the British embassy for wine and hors d'oeuvres. It was sort of funny because I met my country's ambassador to my other country (I have dual citizenship). The ambassador and his wife made a very gracious host and hostess, although I found myself unusually baffled about where to put my hands once I was done shaking theirs. I suppose I'm not used to meeting people who are important enough to represent an entire country.

It was a grand do and my friend, whose guest I was, remember, strictly discouraged me from taking photos. Sorry. This was particularly disappointing once Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell and Maureen Dowd all showed up eventually. I joked to the group I was with that I had to go deck Mr. Greenspan (for the economy stupid), because I have no idea when to keep my mouth shut.

It was a just a joke of course, since I quite admire Mr. Greenspan and I understand he has the good grace to consider our soon-to-be-former president an insufferable buffoon (I may be putting words in his mouth). Luckily people did laugh.

Maureen Dowd, who I like also - though in her case for her practical and/or provocative attitude towards both politics and feminism - was shortly surrounded by a number of young gentlemen. I assume they were trying to demonstrate that they were indeed necessary. I didn't get close enough to find out.

Indeed, I didn't say hi to any of the D.C. celebs because I'd have run out of clever things to say once I announced their own identities to them. I'm fairly sure they're all up to date on such news.

I am bummed I didn't get to ask the guy from BBC what he thought of pursuing journalism in the US. Broadcast journalists in the UK, in my humble opinion, are a bit more forceful when it comes to questions and follow-ups. I wonder if he notices cultural differences on that front too, or if I'm making it all up.

Anyway, I was a small fly on a big wall and I got to meet some interesting people and goggle at others. I was very glad to be invited.

Roundup

2008-12-13T09:09:00.000-08:00

This guy was the hero of the article and makes me guffaw just about every time I see him.

Yesterday, while preening before the mirror of the Internet, I learned some things . . .

> My article made it to the home page of MSNBC. Yay!

This had a lot to do with my subsequent loss of time and goggled-eyed fascination with things said by others about yours-truly on various message-boards.

> People liked it. Or rather, some did. I'm told it was the most-read article on their site yesterday, and since it's only my second published article that fact leaves me a bit breathless. I gather too that some of the brass at MSNBC really enjoyed it, so that's very good news for me.

> People HATED it! One anonymous hater hated it with such hateful ambition they found this blog and left a post telling me just how much. Hey, it's good to hear so I can improve my writing. It also helped me formulate this theory about why and when people loathed it - and by frequent extension - me.

If they felt I was critiquing technologies, people got angry. I poked fun at some much-loved and beleaguered gadgets/technologies, so that wasn't a huge surprise. Particularly the fans of underappreciated, minority-market-share technologies got pissed. Makes sense - no one likes to be put in a corner.
If they read it the way I hoped - as a social critique of people who are thoughtless or heedless and use technology to either forgive or enhance that - they generally thought it was funny and cutting.

> No one defends Bluetooth headsets! Man - no joke - even many of the people who were helpfully pointing out that I'm probably poor, stupid, and a Luddite took time out to mention that they still agree with me on those things. One message-boarder referred to the earpiece as an "ear roach" and almost made me spit hot coffee out of both nostrils.

So, it was a fun day yesterday and now, thanks to the time I spent admiring myself in the Internet, now I have to spend all day mucking about with SQL and AJAX.

My second article

2008-12-12T05:53:00.000-08:00

Yay, my second article is out. It's supposed to be lighthearted and funny.

My friend at MSNBC.com said that people there were cracking up over it, which is encouraging. I've been looking at it for so long that I couldn't tell any more if it was good, bad, or whatever.

today was a good day

2008-12-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

Things are looking up slightly . . .

This coming Monday, it looks like I'll be raising toasts to the season at British embassy thanks to my good friend Farah who has wrangled me an invitation. She's kind of a force of nature when it comes to doing interesting things. Thanks Flail! I have to see if I still fit into my suit. Crap!

Second, my second "interactive" article will go up on MSNBC.com probably later today (it's like 1:00 AM now) thanks to my other good friend and all-around good person, Helen. She's awesome. Yay Helen. I'll post the direct link once it's up.

Third, I just had dinner with my buddy Stan who I got to know while I was in grad school. He's one of those friends you get so tight with that you can pick up years later without skipping a beat. His wife and daughter, who I met for the first time today are great too. I look forward to staying in touch with him better.

Working with computers makes me want to be a builder or painter.
pic by: Andreas Solberg on Flickr

And finally, the most personally relieving, but probably least interesting to the public at large . . . . I got my dev server working on my home computer, and even installed code(s) to diagram my MySQL database and let me play around with AJAX we should have on the website I'm building already.

Update 1 - job?

2008-12-05T08:08:00.000-08:00

Where to start, where to start?

On the job front, I guess.
I'm hoping for a reasonable offer from this company I've just had a couple of interviews with. They're called hapax and their natural language processing software is off the bleeding hook - so much so, that it could probably parse this sentence and tell you that I think highly of their software. I don't know how it handles recursion, but I expect it does so well.

The short of it is that you feed the software text and it reads it and tells you things about it. Remarkable things - possibly even where it's easy to confuse the antecedents.

So, your civic Daniel-duty is to cross your fingers and hope that they offer me a job (and that the salary isn't less than what I was making two jobs ago at Consumer Reports).

I ache . . .

2008-11-10T17:29:00.000-08:00

And not in a romantic, yearning, Yeatsian way either I'm afraid. Not even in a robust, post-athletic fashion.

No. Instead of pursuing a meaningful social-life or mastering unruly abs, I've been hunched, like some information-age Bartleby, over my monitor and keyboard trying to stay on top of this website I'm building with a couple of friends.

I'm the "project manager" - quotes heavily intended - and html/css monkey. Another friend I know from my last job is very able handling the PHP and databases. Nevertheless, I'm pooped. More than once I've thought "I'd prefer not to," mostly where it concerns error testing.

Anyway, twice recently I've had to turn down interesting, lovely requests from good friends to come visit with them and their children. If anyone reading this feels I'm ignoring them recently (rather than perennially), you've got my sincerest apologies. If you feel I've been ignoring you for longer than three weeks or so, you should call me and shout.

Flu

2008-10-31T07:43:00.001-07:00

In addition to providing medical documentation that I'm lean and svelt, going to the doctor reminded me that it's flu-shot season.

Ever since I learned about flu-shots in my epidemiology classes, I've been fascinated by them. I think the facts are fairly cool.

Every year, flus grow in China. Why China? Because it's got the proper mixture of pigs, chickens, and humans living in proximity, and I suspect, a class of people who then get on planes and go elsewhere in the world - thus spreading the flu.

Now, every year I hear people denigrate the flu shot because "I got one last year and then I got the flu". Yes yes. The thing is, you got a flu, not The flu.

Because the other thing that happens each year is that doctors and epidemiologists and immunologists and tinkers and clowns and God-knows-who-else, all get together and try to identify the most virulent and fast-spreading strains of the flus likely to come out of China this year.

Then they put vaccinations to as many of the most dangerous and/or contagious strains as they can in a cocktail and someone else jabs that puppy in your arm and it feels like you overworked your delts yesterday and you get to whine about it all day.

Sometimes they guess wrong about which strain(s) of the flu will do the rounds of the globe, but we continue to hope and believe that they stop the next one that has its eyes on upstaging the strain that affected about 20% of the world's population in 1918 and managed to kill dead about 10-25 percent of those it infected.

So, to sum up:

Flu isn't a single disease - it has more and less contagious or virulent strains
The 1918 flu pandemic killed more than twice the number of people that WWI did.
The point of the vaccine isn't to stop you getting a flu, it's to stop you getting THE flu (and incidentally, to stop you from giving it to your nearest and dearest).
It's a good idea to get a flu shot this year.

Not fat

2008-10-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

If I'm being honest, the last couple years of my life have not been the best of the bunch. I won't dwell though, because I'm English and that's not what we do.

However, good news was delivered today. It doesn't really make up for the preceding 30-ish months, but perhaps because of them, this lifted my spirits. I am back to my college weight.

The best part is that I haven't been trying to get back to any weight whatsoever, so it's like an unexpected gift.

I'm living it up in MI

2008-10-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

I'm back in EL again to hang with Manny.

So far, I've been working on a website for a friend (hey Eric!), fighting off some cold or something I picked up by previously staying up way too late working on said website, and setting up Skype with a webcam so Manny can chat with his wife (hi Mom!), daughter (hi Janet!) and granddaughters (hi Rowan and Jael) across the Pond.

If you are reading this, use skype (or want some help learning how), and know Manny or me, drop me an email a we'll be video-conferencing toot sweet.

Also, stay tuned because my next humor/tech thing for MSNBC might go up any time and I'll post a link here when it does.

this is a funny "Web 2.0"-ish explanation

2008-10-03T20:54:00.001-07:00

of why a web-comic I read (shut your hurtful mouth) wasn't updated this week.

It has some naughty words in it though, so don't click this link if individual words have the power to make you cry.

I call it Web 2.0, because folks like Flickr popularized the use of honest and/or humorous client-facing verbiage in modern web businesses. Also, paradigm and synergy!

http://www.freakangels.com/?p=59

I saw this awesome thing

2008-09-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

on Clicked on MSNBC:

going to Boston

2008-09-23T05:44:00.000-07:00

I'm tripping up to Boston for a conference:

"Web 2.0 and Your Brand". It sounds like the kind of title I roll my eyes at, but having talked with one of the organizers, I'm expecting good things. I expect my only problem with the name is that using "Web 2.0" is a common symptom of taking yourself too seriously, and I'm allergic to that. Still, it is about branding in the world of social media, so the title's right and it should be fun.

I'm going to split the drive by staying in NYC tonight and then driving up to visit my good buddies Eric and Erica in Boston. Looking forward to seeing them.

Anyway, if you need me, I'll be on the road, so calling will work best.

trying out a widget tool

2008-09-19T10:43:00.001-07:00

This is the future of the interwebs . . . perhaps.

But does it work?

~~Well, I didn't put the code in twice, as far as I know. I wonder if the IE tab add-on for firefox is confusing the JavaScript that decides which version of the widget to show. Hmmm.~~

Hey, seems to work just fine now. That's encouraging.

my car just got stolen . . .

2008-09-16T06:45:00.001-07:00

. . . By the NY police dept.

Apparently it was moved by the movies unit, but after 45 minutes of calling, hand-wringing, & wandering around, we found it. No thanks, I might add, to the goddamn police.

Blinds are making me crazy

2008-08-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

I have to install new blinds in my apartment because some of the slats are ugly from the street. Don't get me started.

Unfortunately, the blinds seem to be an abnormal size and - so that I can't just move the brackets - they're installed on a metal door.

At least these blinds and the many trips they call for to Home Depot give me a good excuse not to work on my resume.

Stupid resume. Stupid blinds.

debate follow-up

2008-08-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

http://chronicle.com/free/2008/08/4336n.htm

Well, Fort Hays State University fired the debate coach and communications professor shown dropping trow in the previous post. I'm amazed by two things that show up in the follow-up articles.

The first is that the university official said that they heard nothing about this whole incident until it showed up on YouTube. I would have thought the debate league's judges might have had a word or two in the ears of Fort Hays reps. If I was throwing a debate and one team's coach showed up acting the fool like this, I'd certainly ask for some sort of explanation/banning from the participating school.

Second, the school's debate team - apparently a pretty good one - got suspended thanks to their coach's antics. The president of FHSU said this was to give them time to look at debate as a whole and to make sure the FHSU team wasn't disadvantaged in coming debates. I figure not being in a debate greatly disadvantages you, but there you go.

You are the vulgarian, you fuck!

2008-08-18T15:16:00.001-07:00

In times of a crappy economy, pointless foreign wars, a starkly divided political landscape (the reasons for which this video might illuminate by the way), waxing fundamentalism and anti-intellectualism on the rise, you take your humor where you can get it - even if it's a debate benchclear (lol):

I personally prefer my humor a bit more, you know, "on purpose" than this, but that doesn't make this case study in irony any less succulent. If debate isn't about shouting down an opposing point of view, then what do you call Congress, smarty pants? It isn't smirkingly known as a deliberative body for nothing you know.

Also, do go ahead and watch the whole thing. It isn't a one-note piece of inadvertent performance art. The rambling ad hoc defense the bearded debate coach slings together for flying off the handle is charmingly instructive.

Enjoy - but don't click play if grown up language makes you cry. Finally, please someone make a joke about re-butt-als in the comments. :)

The post title is a line from A Fish Called Wanda.

Aye! Phone!

2008-08-16T18:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm compiling a list of things that piss me off about the iPhone. I've signed up for a developer account in hopes of being able to build a GTD application that doesn't make me crazy, but I'm not much of a coder and so I'm not too hopeful.

Among my complaints was the lack of good voice-note software - you know, a dictaphone. I mean, you've got a microphone, a hard drive, and a speaker. What's to stop you from letting me record my spontaneous thoughts?

An early model Zune.

Well, I downloaded the evernote app (for free) and it's good. It's probably great if you really jump into the evernote process, putting a XUL thingydoo on Firefox and downloading the software for your desktop. But jeez, I just want to be able to press a button on my phone and say executive shit like, "remember wife's birthday this year" (for which I acknowledge I'd need both software and a wife), "sell shares in Enron", or "cover vent on death star". You know Vader would have gotten to that if that game of Simon on his chest had been equipped with an MP3 recorder.

Anyway, the real downfall of the iApp for evernote is that it wants to connect to my evernote account somewhere on the Internet. This is a pain in the ass in just enough places to make it a proper pain in the ass. I've got 18 gigs of space on my phone for just these sorts of occasions. I should be able to take annotated video and store it locally.

And actually, what's up with not being able to shoot video? It's a trick question because I know your answer already Apple - "the camera isn't up to it". Ah, well you walked into that one didn't you? What up with the camera?

My flickr account would lead you to believe I developed Parkinsons concurrently with acquiring a new phone. I know, various Apple apologists have pointed out it's a phone before it's a camera, but that's like excusing broken AC in a car by saying it's not a fridge. I know it's not a camera, but it cost me a lot of money and Apple made a lot of noise about all this non-phone stuff it can do. You know what, if the lens or the image-capture chip isn't up to snuff, tilt the lens 45 degrees and sell it as a "spy camera". I'm tired of trying to take discreet pictures while holding the phone perpendicular to the ground.

I may have gotten off point there . . . considering that the point was that I finally downloaded YouNote.

It's awesome so far. It supports picture notes, audio notes, web notes, doodles and text notes. Moreover, I can tag the notes while the phone geotags them - you know, in case all I can remember is that I had a good idea in Santa Fe. It looks as though they're working too on letting you add a contact to the note for easy calling - though it doesn't work yet.

And actually, good luck with that. Despite coming with an operating system, the phone doesn't seem to support developers who want to pass things back and forth between programs. Would it be too much to ask to be able to copy? And perhaps paste? If I find a phone number in an email, I can call it, but I can't easily add it to contacts without actually calling the person.

Anyway, I'm daniel harrison and I approve this YouNote app.

The Olympics

2008-08-15T19:40:00.001-07:00

If this Olympic elk were to take a poo, I'd give it a medal for Canada and choose to watch it over Michael Phelps.
This pic found here

I've been watching 'em. Here's my take.

I'm tired of Michael Phelps. He seems like a nice enough guy, but every time he ventures close to something wetter than a damp dishtowel, coverage jumps to him. Sometimes I want to watch gymnastics because, you know, it's interesting - unlike swimming.

Also, while it's cool he's winning like a million billion medals and all, you can only do that in a couple of sports. And those sports are swimming.

Even if you're a talented runner, you only get to run each distance in one direction. If it was like swimming there'd be a different medal for people who ran it backwards, sideways, and bow-legged. Phelps is a sick athlete, but I'd watch the Brazilian volleyball team any day of the week over him bringing another medal home for the U.S. of A.

Softball should be banned. I just don't like the sport. I've never seen players of an Olympic sport look so out of shape. I just watched about 30 seconds of a game and one of our players looks like Babe Ruth. It reminds me of English soccer players before the rest of the world realized that not eating fish and chips or smoking might give you an edge.

Is baseball an Olympic sport? I hope not, and let's keep cricket out of it while we're at it.

And actually, to follow up on the point made above about swimming, I don't only want to watch U.S. medal sports. I know that's an old critique, but if it's a choice between watching paint dry for an American gold and say, Judo (which is part of one of the most rapidly growing sports in the U.S.) then give me China vs. Iran in Judo any day. I didn't shell out all that cash for an HDTV to watch curling or darts. Sheesh.

Oooh, look!

2008-08-12T06:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25852407

iSigh

2008-08-11T16:17:00.000-07:00

It's a wonder I didn't get smeared all across Delaware on the way home from NYC this morning.

It's all I can do not to fiddle with my new iPhone. I'd downloaded the Pandora application and I can report that it works nicely. I'm a longtime fan of Pandora since a friend turned me on to it. (Check out Pandora.com now if you'd like an online "radio" station that plays music similar to a song or band you suggest - takes a few seconds to get going after you register).

I assumed it would need WiFi access in order to stream the songs, but as I hurtled along strictly within the speed limit of each of the 4 (?) states I passed through, it managed to play the music I wanted. It even paused when I got a phone call and started up again once I hung up. Radio that waits while you're on the phone is a fancy luxury. The only downside was that as I pulled into Maryland, it started wondering if perhaps by "Gnarls Barkley" I'd meant Dru Hill and some horrifying freestyle crap I most certainly didn't want to hear.

So, Pandora was a success, but now I'm getting frustrated. I'm used to being able to tinker with technology and the iPhone sort of sells on this premise. I'll withhold judgment for a while, but I'd really like to be able to choose on an application-by-application (or even instance-by-instance of an application) basis whether or not the screen was going to lock up after a minute. I guess for drives I could turn that function off entirely.

I'd also like a way to grab a phone number out of an email and turn it into a contact. I can dial it, so the phone knows it's a number. Why can't it let me create a contact? Does anyone know offhand of an app that allows that? While we're at it, is there an app for messing with the camera - which blows. I'd like to affect shutter speed and so forth.

I've got a couple of other wishes on my list - like a good IM client and a way around the stupid texting fees - so I'll probably be jailbreaking my phone eventually. Have to look into that a bit more. Oh, and iTunes makes me just furious.

NYC

2008-08-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

I'm spending this week visiting NYC.

I love it. I left back in the day because I got a job in D.C., and I regretted leaving behind all the cool people even as I was packing my stuff.

Now, after revisiting CU and going out with other folks in the city, I'm extra wistful. It was flattering and wonderful walking around CU and seeing everyone. I badly misjudged how much time I'd need to see everyone and had to go back on Wednesday after being there most of the day on Tuesday.

If I missed seeing you, I'm really sorry.

I'm torn between D.C. and NYC now. I guess wherever i get a job first is the place I'll go.

Keeping all that in mind, being back in NYC with some perspective is funny. The fashionistas are still out and about, but now instead of thinking they're cool and hip I'm a little concerned that they're stunted. Riding down Flatbush Ave in Bklynn I saw a guy who had clearly spent way too long in front of the mirror choosing the right pants and shirt to accentuate his sunglasses. That shit was cool and edgy in high school, but come on.

P.S. - I'm older than Adam apparently

stoopid iPhone

2008-08-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

I may not be able to stand myself if I buy my new iPhone in NYC's meatpacking district. Phil, if I come home with my collar popped I'm counting on you to fucking kick my ass.

I was visiting As. - who I'm staying with in NYC - at her job in the Chelsea Market and decided I'd go over to the new Apple Store for giggles. I got there and a very nice young lady informed me that they'd just sold out half an hour before.

No! Way! I guess I'll be coming back tomorrow since the feeding frenzy seems to be over and regular mortals can buy iPhones.

Meanwhile, trendy NYC remains kind of preposterous. I was riding a hipster bike in Brooklyn today (don't ask) and wanted to pull over and push myself down for being such a dork.

Offline validation of the online spirit

2008-08-01T14:08:00.000-07:00

I totally stole this!
To complete the joke, Dan Walsh should send me a cease and desist letter.

So, "getting it" is a problematic phrase thrown around way too much by folks who work on the web. It's a shorthand way of saying, we're smarter than "they" are because we're all hip and with-it and we have iPods.

Except when used over beers (or in post-meeting bitch sessions after investors have left the room), it's lazy and more than a little arrogant and cliquish. If you're really all that smart, define what "it" is and explain just what "they" don't get about it.

I thought as much.

Moreover, the secret thing about the Web is that it keeps on changing all the time so no one really "gets it" (except of course Kevin Rose).

So, with that qualifier in mind, a lot of people who are tasked with moving non-Web stuff online are slow to understand the differences in how business can or should be done. I'm looking squarely at you, record labels.

So it's nice to see that Jim Davis does in fact get it. Jim Davis is the guy who created the most syndicated comic in the world, Garfield. Dan Walsh, who seems like a net native, is the guy who had the idea to remove the eponymous cat from Davis's strips leaving just a portrait of his crazy, haunted owner Jon Arbuckle. The result is a distressingly funny meditation on lunacy and modern loneliness that makes me want to laugh and cry in about equal parts. It's better than Cats.

Now, in the usual course of affairs (Hasbro, I'm looking at you now, you jackasses) Jim Davis and his publishers would swoop in, shout sort of heedlessly about intellectual property rights, and crap all over everyone's parade. However, Davis did nothing of the sort. He declared that he liked it and with the help of Ballantine books (who publish Garfield) he's doing a joint project with Walsh.

You just have to breathe a sigh of relief. After Hasbro decided that they were going to shut down Scrabulous rather than ask for a percentage of the profits, it's encouraging to see someone coming from an offline medium who freaking gets it.

Finally!

2008-07-27T17:20:00.001-07:00

Thank God. I was wondering when someone would step up and show the world this record was only unbreakable in our hearts and minds.

Clicky: Man Breaks Underwater Cycling World Record

I would have done it myself if I'd had scuba equipment, a bike I wanted to ruin, and any previous inkling that such a record existed. Seriously, can you just make up records to break? I currently hold the world record for being made up of the genotype I'm made up of - 34 years.

And counting!

An interesting note from the article, Mr. Vittorio Innocente says he wants to show that you can bike anywhere. Great, now prove it's a good idea. Actually, since he's doing it for charity, it's still a good idea.

My new filing technique is unstoppable

2008-07-23T07:12:00.000-07:00

That's not just a reference to this reliable chestnut of Internet humor.

It's also the awesome truth. Or the sad truth if you consider how long it took me to get here.

I'm not terribly organized as a rule. I'm lucky to be smart enough to fake it most of the time, but there's a limit. I passed that limit, if we're going to be honest, in college some time. That's (carry the twelve . . .) a billion years ago now.

So, during my recent ample free time I decided to get my goddamn act together. I picked up a copy of a book recommended by the good folks over at boingboing.net called "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. I'm universally leery of self-help and/or business books - they're all written at the 3rd to 4th grade reading level and tend to be littered with advice that insults most peoples' intelligence - but so far boingboing hasn't steered me wrong.

In tandem with the "Finish Rich Workbook", Getting Things Done provided a context for filing. It sounds daft even as I write it, but let's be honest, the actual process of filing is not that tough if you have a good (or frankly even just consistent) grasp of the alphabet. There are two difficult bits:

Creating a place for everything to go;
Understanding why you should put things in their places rather than say, on the floor, under the bed, or most usually, in a pile next to (or, good grief, under) other piles.

Once you have a place for everything (Finish Rich Workbook), and an understanding of why things go there (Gettting Things Done), the act of filing is simple. And, and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this because let's face it I'm geeky enough as is, empowering? I understand now why my stepfather gets so excited about "wizardizing". You feel as though you're getting stuff done.

Unless you've already got your own system of filing, you probably don't understand this post at all. Actually, it may be that you had to be a total disaster like myself to really appreciate the transformation. Some people just seem fantastically organized all the time.

I file those people under "bastard".

I'm totally getting a new iPhone . . .

2008-07-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

Just not yet apparently.

I talked to a rather harried-sounding bloke down at the Apple-Store-cum-iPhone-store and he told me that while they had a small number of iPhones left today, there was a line out the door that was clocking in at, hold on let me check, oh a four hour wait.

When I asked if he had any idea when the feeding frenzy was going to stop, he sounded almost as though he was about to cry. "I thought it would be over by now." Poor guy.

I'll get my phone once the lunacy is over. That meshes nicely with my earlier plan of waiting to hear if anything really crappy started to happen with them or if the battery life became a problem.

I like this

2008-07-17T11:15:00.000-07:00

Joss Whedon reliably throws good stories together.

You should probably look at this since Joss Whedon seems to have written it and it's got Doogie Howser and Mal in it: http://www.drhorrible.com/

Awesome

2008-07-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

This takes me back to two separate portions of my life. The most obvious being when I lived in NYC. The other being when I would do crazy reckless things.

Enjoy:

Back in Reston, back online

2008-07-14T12:53:00.000-07:00

Hey Verizon stopped by today and totally hooked me up with broadband and HDTV. On top of all that, the interface for using the cable is just a lot easier than the crap I had to put up with from Comcast.

I'm growing further convinced that interface is the edge these days. Apple broke stirringly into the cell phone market using primarily interface changes. BMW keeps getting hammered for that nonsense iDrive doodly do that no one can use. And Comcast made me suffer through that terrible terrible interface they had to the point where I was happy for any out I could find.

I only watch about 5 hours of TV a week, if that, but I don't want those precious moments marred by frustration. There are still a lot of interfaces to be improved, and I think that players who can fix them in markets where they're broken (DVDs - and frankly anywhere else IP protection gets in the way of ease-of-use - I'm looking at yous) stand to corner the market.

Verizon is, however, bringing yearly contracts to the table. That's an unnecessary frustration, right? I'm sure it's a large investment to send folks out to link houses up (even after laying the cables), but you'd imagine getting more people out of the gate would offset the one-time hook up costs.

Still, it's good to be back online so I won't complain just yet.

small town adventure

2008-07-10T08:39:00.001-07:00

Maverick is a bit of a twit.

Today when we went for breakfast (at that restaurant I hate, yes, I know), there was a very eager dog (a shitzu I think) scampering around the parking lot trying to make friends, run under cars, the usual.

One of the folks we were meeting for breakfast is an inveterate animal saver. Last week at breakfast she told us all about the ferret she saved in the woods (MSU has a lot of students, and this time of year is when irresponsible students ditch their unwanted pets). Anyway, Kathy saw the dog and got that unmistakable look in her eye.

More for Kathy than for the dog, I offered the use of our back yard - which is fenced in - for dog storage while we ate breakfast and decided what to do with the pooch. I used my cell phone to call the dog-grooming place right next door to the restaurant, in case it had been boarded there and escaped, but it was 8:15 at this point and no one answered.

Eventually, we hatched the plan to call the animal control people and foist the problem off on them. That's why they're there after all. But this was going to have to wait until Kathy was done with some errands. Meanwhile, I threw a stick for the dog in the back yard. He was not a bright dog. Or he's deaf perhaps. Full of energy, but dumb.

Anyway, speaking of dumb, as I was playing with the pooch it (finally) occurred to me that I could take a picture of him with my phone. After a torturous period getting the little bastard to sit still enough that I could shoot the pic, I called the now-open grooming shop and asked if they boarded dogs. No, no they don't. Okay, well, does this dog sound familiar? Wait a sec, I'll send you a picture.

A few moments later i got a call back and it turns out that Maverick is well known to the ladies of the doggy salon. So, the dog is back in the hands of people who love him, Kathy is very glad to have the weight off her mind, and I'm psyched that my (cheap cheap phone) managed to enable some fancy communication.

Lively?

2008-07-09T05:18:00.000-07:00

I just tried out Lively, Google's answer to Second Life.

It's a virtual world that uses your browser as the client software. You can read more about it here on Google's blog.

If you need to hug when you go to blogs, this might be the technology for you. I'm not sure I need the social web quite that much up in my grill, but I've read Stephenson's "Snow Crash", so I understand this might be a step in a potentially fruitful direction.

Still, why Google? For a long time I've resisted the urge to call Google evil just because they have all my data and know everything I've ever done online. Creepy. Now I wonder if they're becoming evil by mistake.

In a world where business plans end with "Step 3: Sell to Google/MS/Yahoo", I think we have to start worrying about how monopolizing audience and/or coding talent limits the creativity of the web.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but we're seeing this disturbing trend of a few major players buying up or co-opting the entire web. So Google, just because you can compete with SecondLife doesn't mean you have to. You're a search engine, remember? How long before they start selling books?

On the other hand, Lively is a pain to use so far. Maybe this is a flash in the pan.

Meanwhile, here's a view of Google through Lively (or not, I don't know. I'm just embedding a Lively room because I can.):

I knew it!

2008-07-09T05:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/9421

This validates men and English people everywhere!

Ups (. . . and downs)

2008-07-08T19:51:00.000-07:00

At least today wasn't boring.

I got a follow-up on some ActionScripting work. I've been working on it all day and I think I've got a pretty good start. It should bring in enough money that I can eat this month. Yay for eating!

I also got email from my buddy that we're getting closer to some of my writing going up on MSNBC, which is a big deal for me. Moreover, I may get to write stuff that's more complicated than what I've done so far. I choose to view that as a "promotion". On the other hand, I also choose to believe that I'm hanging out behind the Gas 'n' Sip alone on a Saturday night by choice, so maybe I'm not the best judge (who spotted the reference? Anyone? . . . Okay, anyone other than Helen?).

On the down side, I had to go to a nearby restaurant with M. today and this restaurant is a haunt of the local oldies. It smelled vaguely of urine this afternoon and made me sad, so sad. It's a restaurant where you absolutely order with a whimper rather than a bang. I feel I should get a menu to hang on my mirror to remind me daily of the dangers of aging, to remind me not to go gently into (this eatery whose name I've redacted), but I'll be damned if I'm going back there ever again. Ain't happening.

Finally, I got a CD (I know, how quaint right?) that I ordered through the pony express. It's by a band called Lexicon and contains the song "Rock". It makes me happy just to hear it and the chorus makes this song one that many people love but few know the name to. I'll do you all a favor and point you at their MySpace page. Play "Rock". You'll thank me. (however, it's the only song I like on the album)

The fourth of July

2008-07-04T16:58:00.000-07:00

After two mojitos each, M. and I are in a festive spirit. We just ate chips and salsa out back, M. all the while lamenting that if we ate any more we'd spoil dinner. Well, dinner is spoiled and now we're having melon with prosciutto and then corn on the cob.

We're listening to a newly created Pandora station that I seeded with "sousa". M.'s more interested in this application of the Internet than anything else we've seen thus far.

It played a Sousa something or other, followed immediately by the can-can, the theme to Star Wars, and something from the Nutcracker.

It's a totally absurd sound-track to a funny evening.

Happy 4th everyone.

I'm so tired of Chris Anderson

2008-06-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

I've altered this whole post because it was kind of an unfocused rant.

My point stands though. Chris Anderson made this daft pronouncement, that the scientific method is "obsolete". In my opinion, Anderson oversimplifies subtle topics (I'm guessing, so he can write popular books about them) and in the process either misses what's important or interesting, or in this case allows himself to stretch his observations beyond their capacity.

And, as long as he's taking advantage of his soap box to go around making blunt pronouncements (that are, I think, way off base), it's worthwhile to make counter-arguments. Or, in this case at least, to point out good ones elsewhere.

This blog doesn't reach more than a couple of you, but I encourage you to read Anderson's misconstrual (as well as the various comments that take him to task), and also the "rebuttals". After all, in an America where science is already being threatened in the schools by creationists, it's probably important to know a bit about how science actually works.

Ars Technica and Kevin Kelley tackle the issue Anderson raises in smarter, more precise terms. I think there's more to be said, and I may do so, perhaps elsewhere.

Jogging

2008-06-29T16:16:00.001-07:00

I jogged about a mile a couple of days ago before all my anatomy let me know with crystal clarity that this running crap was not on. I turned around and huffed and puffed back to the house with my tail between my legs.

The next day I felt as though I'd inadvertently put my legs under a steamroller.

Then, yesterday, I ran about two miles. Today I feel fine.

If my math's correct, by the end of next week I should be running 64 miles at a go. I'm looking forward to it. I don't see what all the fuss about marathons is.

In totally unrelated news, I'm fat. I swear, even the air here in Michigan is deep fried.

M. and technology

2008-06-28T18:14:00.001-07:00

M. just crushed me at Wii bowling. I'm not even sure what to make of that. He's 83.

On the topic of being 83 and thinking about technology, educating M. about the web and how to access it has been very instructive. It's also been like trying to teach a camel to knit.

I remember my friend Anne telling me about an article she read that talked about how IQ is actually increasing. Apparently, younger generations are taught to do a better job of abstraction - and IQ tests favor that skill set. I'm not sure I buy it, but there's something going on here. An example she repeated is that if you ask someone of my generation to name similarities shared by a dog and a rabbit, we'd tell you about quadrupedia, mammalian attributes, and so on.

Apparently among some older generations, the question is nonsense. You use dogs to kill rabbits, so they're sort of diametrically opposed.

As I say, I'm not sure I take all that as gospel, but I've been trying to explain the Web to M. using first principles. However, he's approaching it very practically. To him, it's not important what programs are open to allow him to see his email. I'm much (much) less interested in getting something done than I am in understanding how it works.

Gorillas, gorillas, report to the mist . . .

2008-06-25T17:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry if you arrived here looking for an Ice Cube song.

Following on from my last post, my next interactive is going to be about technologies and gadgets that make you look like a d-bag if you use them. This is a call for suggestions. Anyone got any ideas?

I've got blue tooth headsets outside the car, crackberries, and the Apple Airbook so far. Anyone got other ideas?

I'm a writing machine . . .

2008-06-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

This chimp is just one underpaid intern in my brain.

. . . though not like a typewriter. More like a room filled with chimps.

Right now I've got my chimps writing some basic "interactives" for MSNBC.com. The first one is something like "Technologies that signal the end of days". It's supposed to be humorous and perhaps thought-provoking. I'll link to it when and if it goes up.

Unfortunately, I've learned that writing for mass media is hard, you've got to write to all layers of reader. I'm reminded of something my dad once opined, that the best writers in England often worked for the tabloids. They were the only ones who could manage to write about intelligent topics intelligently, and not leave behind the, er, less educated members of the audience. It turns out that writing intelligently for the mass market is tough to do well.

Luckily, the web is a good medium for educating as you go. It's possible to drop in links (like the one I used above) to give readers who want it a little background.

Regent to the good king

2008-06-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

I'm hanging out with Good King M. (step dad) these days. I'm not sure if that makes me the regent, but close enough.

It's exciting or amusing work for these reasons:

Cooking
Cooking with/for M. is like being in the kitchen with a lemur. If you're chopping anything he likes, his hand will dart in between knife chops to steal unguarded morsels. He's 83; How can his hands be so swift? I'm the equivalent of a black belt in hand-to-hand combat and I'm powerless to stop him.

Oxygen
M.'s wearing a little oxygen-delivery system. It makes tiny puffs, so he sounds like Darth Vader as interpreted by Hello Kitty.

"I am your stepfather Daniel . . . poof, poof."

Politics
M. is very sweet in apologizing for leaving the world a crappier place than when he found it. I'm not even sure that's accurate, but he's very concerned about this administration's failures vis-a-vis oil, healthcare, education, etc.

Cooking again
Did I mention that the Good King's idea of a great vegetable-side for chicken is honey? Is it sweet and fiberless? Perfecto!

The Interwebs
I'm tutoring M. on how to use the web. He's a good student except he believes using the web will be harder than it is. He's by no means the only person to suffer from this misconception, so no big deal. If you can recommend interesting sites, let me know.

The only downside for me is that when I explain about my successes on the web (like how, for instance I'm probably going to get some freelance work up on MSNBC shortly) he's not suitably impressed. He's never heard of MSNBC, let alone gone there. To be fair, MSNBC isn't that big a deal (sarcasm), and M. knows I went to high school with one of the founders of Google (truth).

Hard to top.

Going home

2008-06-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

I'm in bucolic Michigan. I've returned to the old homestead to keep ye old step-dad company while my mom toddles off to England for a while.

I hadn't planned to be unemployed and living at home in my thirties, but here we are. Actually, it'll be a convenient place from which to conduct my job search, I guess. Also, I'm out of Reston for a bit, so that's pretty sweet.

I'm not very connected right now

2008-06-11T18:16:00.000-07:00

Comcast and I have had a falling out. It's been a long time coming, and I think we both sort of expected it.

The writing's been on the wall for a while. The first time Comcast came over I knew it was going to be problematic when they tried to install their shit on my computer. I mean, talk about moving too fast. Boundaries, right?

As time went on, when we talked on the phone I felt as though we were speaking different languages. Now, as long as I'm going to be going home to MI for a couple of weeks, I felt like it was time. Besides, I met someone new I'm kind of into - Verizon Fios. Very fast and easy apparently, and I think that's what i'm looking for right now.

Anyway, point is, it may be hard to contact me for a little while. Sorting out the Internet is priority 1 once I'm in Michigan.

So I thought this would be funny

2008-06-09T21:02:00.000-07:00

Taking a page from my buddy Mike Elkin's book, I decided it might be funny to translate something from English to Spanish to Swedish to English again and see how it came out. I may have better ideas for source material in the future, but I'm starting with Hamlet's "To be or not to be?" soliloquy.

It probably bears saying that I got the original version from Wikipedia and it probably needs a translation from English to English

Emphasis is all mine . . .

To be vai does not, that is the question:
If 'tis the noble, suffering from Minden
The sling and arrow, outragious Fortune,
Or, to take Armes against the sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: dye, to sleep
Not any more, and a sleep to say that at the end of
The Heart-AKE, and thousands of Naturall Shock
This meat is too heyra? 'TIS a consummation
Deuoutly is wish'd. To Dye to bed,
Sleep, perchance to dream, I is a bargain,
If you would like us to sleep and death, which may become a Dream,
When haue shuffel'd remove this mortal Coile,
Must Giu vs. Paws. The so-respect
Calamity, that the so-long life:
To be Beare whips and scoria time,
The Evil oppressors, Poore mans contumely,
Changing of the Guard and dispriz'd Loue, the delay in Lawes,
The Spanish: hibris, hybris office (I have just no idea about this), and the Spurn
, That the patients have to be made with vnworthy,
When itself be able to make his quietus
When the bare bodkin? What are these Fardles Beare
In order to grunt and sweat-vnder tired of life,
However, that fear is something after death,
The vndiscouered Countrey, which Borne
Not Traueller return, Puzels will,
And it is facing a Beare Illes, we haue,
Then flye others who do not know.
Thus conscience makes cowards in front of everyone,
And, therefore, that HEW Natiue resolution
Is Sicklied o're, pale cast of thought,
And Enterprize bone marrow, and a great moment,
In this sense, his Currants turn away,
And loose the name of action.

Enjoy

George Orwell and sock puppets

2008-06-06T10:18:00.001-07:00

In case you don't watch boingboing.net like I do, this appealed to my geeky sense of the absurd.

Sock puppets deconstructing George Orwell's 1984.

Ugh - an update

2008-06-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm fully back from Kenya.

My body re-entered the country about three weeks ago, but my mind's been taking its sweet time to catch up. I finally feel like I'm back and once again focused on finding a stinking job.

On that front, there have been a couple of nibbles, but nothing concrete yet.

In the meantime, I'm happy to report that I'm making ends meet via dividends from a real-estate investment and some freelance coding. This month I've made a couple of thousand dollars already, so that might bide me for a while. Helen's also working to help me out with writing stuff at MSNBC, but writing isn't something that's thick on my resume, so it's by no means a sure thing. Also, I think that given how quickly I write and the pay rate for coding, coding is much more lucrative.

However, as I predicted with online community, more and more people are lumping community and content together. That means I'd like to get more writing/editing on my resume. It's stuff I've done before, but always interstitially, never as a proper job.

Video

2008-05-19T17:32:00.000-07:00

As promised:

Here's a hippo chasing another hippo:

And here's me and Farah with some lions:

Back from Kenya

2008-05-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

I look a little fearful here, not so much because I'm a coward as because there's a goddamn lion within pouncing distance of my head.

Also, I'm a huge coward when it comes to being eaten.

So I'm back in the U.S. jet-lagged out of my gourd and suffering from what I'll politely call a case of "persistent indigestion". I'm a bit pissed about that last because I was fine the whole trip until the very end. I think I ate a tomato like a huge git.

I'll write more later about reflections and so forth on going to Kenya and helping to connect the school to the web.

As I say, I'm a bit under the weather today (didn't even go to kali class), so if I was supposed to contact you today, I apologize. I hope you'll forgive me.

Just got bitten by a safari ant

2008-05-14T05:28:00.000-07:00

. . . which hurts!

More importantly though, I've managed to help connect Farah's program for street children, Jitegemee, to the Web. I've also downloaded some upgrades to programs and drivers that should make the kids' experience of the Web a lot more like the rest of the worlds'.

I feel like a bit of a thief taking credit for connecting the place though. The computers came from other donors (from MSU I think) and Safaricom makes their service quite simple to sign up for. It's still slow - we got 15 Kbps during the download of the driver (and remember 64K was dial up, right?) - but it's not bad and it works.

I won't write much except to point you at this horrifying little beastie, which I'm told is what crawled up the back of my leg and gave me a thorough biting behind my knee .