Click images for desktop size: "Darkness Over Grass" by Unknown I'm not sure if I'm getting old or if I'm dying.
I don't think I have enough experience in either to say with certainty.

I've been pretty bugged by the recent Mcain-Palin rallies. They look like the old Nazi hate rallies. They seem to have no real purpose except to exhort the crowd to a lynch mob frenzy. Not to go out and vote but to go out and hate and kill.
I mean Palin nor McCain have said or done anything about people screaming "Kill him!" and the like. McCain's odd choice of referring to us as his "fellow prisoners" smacks of inciting to riot. They're sure not trying to quell the hatred or the explicit racism.
You could be far less cynical than I am and think that the
Click images: "Frankenstein" by Universal Pictures Republican strategy has gone to the limit of trying to incite on of the more moronic KKK right to lifer bomber types to go and assassinate Obama.
Given the naked loathing that McCain has displayed this is a pretty credible theory. As McCain reminds us he' a bad pilot with a hard set bigotry. He wouldn't flinch about walking into the White House in bloody shoes.
Sad but what else explains the non-reaction to a frothing crowd member screaming KILL HIM!", and then exciting the crowd to attack a black cameraman in the press pit?
I read the Todd Palin written answers to the Troopergate investigation. Boy, he sure runs the government up there. He claims that its just a spouse helping out his wife, but man . . . considering this thing was strained through three lawyers and not a spontaneous answering of questions its pretty chilling.
Not only was he running the government but he was a pretty non-stop gossip. Seems to spend a lot
Click images for desktop size: "Emi" by Skyoon of time slandering this guy where common sense would say to keep your private matters private.
It stinks a lot of Cheny's Black Government. This guy would implement that bleak plan pretty fully.

I installed the new AppleTV update 2.2 last week. Its pretty interesting. Some of the features it offers are useless to me. The Genius playlist thing is still just creepy to me.
What it does do that is useful is allow you to view the cast and credits while the movie is playing! This is pretty cool. Its an overlay window, semi-transparent.
The other feature is that it finally utilizes the chapter function of mp4's. It freezes the frame then opens up the chapter listing making it a simple task to go to the chapter you want.
this partially addresses the big issue of slow seek times in mp4's. Its elegant. It works. Its fun and its cool.
But most oddly the update has made a few of my movies unplayable!
The theory is that if iTunes can play it so can AppleTV. The problem appears to be with my movies that have Chinese soundtracks. Apparently when the AppleTV encounters a language (in this case Traditional Chinese) it messes with something that causes the movie to not display, even though it plays the sound just fine . . . What? Yeah.
I'm trying a suggestion and that's to open the mp4 in Quicktime and then change the coding that calls the soundtrack Traditional Chinese to English. (Under Quicktimes "Movie Properties" menu item) This sets something in the header that apparently fools the AppleTV into playing the file . . . what's nuts is that it works . . . This is a major foul up in my opinion and typical of the New Apple theory, which is way too much like the old Microsoft Theory - Just run it out there without testing it. Let the consumer find the bugs.
It also works for Korean and Japanese films. I haven't tried just changing the AAC track and not the AC3 track. I change them both. Its stupid tedious. But it works and is the simplest solution I've found until the next AppleTV update.
Before the update I had ATVFlash installed. This enabled me to set up an SSH connection so I could save some music and song files that were lost when the PB crashed. It had some other benefits like Web Browsing on the AppleTV (really stupid in execution) but mainly the ability to play DivX and Xvid files.

Click images for desktop size: "Marvel Heroes" As a lot of people use it for home movies etc this was very cool and useful.
To get the AppleTV update I had to wipe those apps off the system. But its cool. There a new FREE and open source solution that works much better!
Boxee is freely available via google code. It requires the old USB flash drive and that's about it.
It installs Boxee and XBMC. XBMC is a mildly interesting. I think it stands for Xbox Media Center. Its Windows roots are really apparent in its clunky interface and "skins" that sometimes work and sometimes forget important functions. (One that comes packaged with it forgot the stop button when watching a movie). Still they extend the usefulness of the AppleTV in little ways (displaying the time and the weather so it can be called up by just a flic of the remote) and big. It also easily handles DivX, Xvid and even Matroska (mkv).
It does not extend or improve the hardware. Matroska files encoded at larger than 720p or higher than 5000 kb will still stutter and look like hell.
Boxee is based on XBMC but adds some interesting features. It promotes itself as a "social" tool. I'm not too big on social sites. Here it seems that you can recommend films to your "friends" etc. You have to wait for an invitation to join the Boxee network. It took them two days to answer my request. Once you log in Boxee gives you access to several music, TV and Movie sites. Pretty cool stuff, like Last.fm and CNN. Decent.
It also gives you access to the Internet Movie Archives. You can actually watch and download Public Domain films right from your AppleTV. This is a nice function.
Boxee also connects to IMDB and will tag and annotate your Xvid movies with posters cast list etc.

Click images for desktop size: "Hhhhhmmmmm" by Unknown Boxee comes with one pre-installed friend. You get to see his recommendations and what he last watched each time you log in. I have no idea how to get more friends or if you'd rally want to.
Boxee uses SMB file shares to connect back to your home computer. SMB is Windows based and a bit less secure than APF file sharing. It also takes a touch more memory but works well enough.
It also easily played the files the AppleTV choked on.
So with these nice clean adjustments I'm still enjoying the AppleTV. Best gift I ever gave someone . . . even if I do seem to use it the most . . .

Posted by David at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Wedding" by Clarence Holbrook Carter There's an apochraphylic story from the sixties.
Lyndon Johnson was running for Senator. He told his campaign manager to start spreading a rumour that his opponent had carnal knowledge of sows.
The campaign manager was aghast. He sputtered, "Mr Johnson, we can't say he's a pig f***er! Its not true!"
In the joke Johnson replied, "I know that. The point is to make him deny it!"
The Republican Party never got the joke.
There latest commercial libeling Obama is a dangerous disgrace.
Implying that Obama is a pedophile goes too far. It harkens back to the evil Nixon "Dirty Tricks" campaign.
It also presents an ugly innuendo about the Republicans. The statement that they are using in their sly innuendo was a plea to teach kindergarten students the difference between good and bad touching from an adult.
Its not unreasonable to purpose that the Republicans don't want children to know the difference. Since they've created the ad its fair to surmise that they are advocating keeping children ignorant and even less able to protect themselves. Any right thinking man could decide that they wanted children ignorant so that they can prey upon them.
One of the few things I whole heartedly agree with Obama about and its twisted like this.
I've worked with young people for a whole lot of years. Its always been important to me that no kid, male or female, ever feel uncomfortable around me. I spend a lot of time in locker rooms with the kids. I've always made it a hard unbreakable rule that no coach, including myself, ever be alone with a kid in those sort of situations. There must always be at least one other coach and one other player. Its not much but its all I could come up. Kids are already woefully ignorant. They are
Click images for desktop size: "Flying Withus Dog" by Flying Wombat 007 vulnerable. They need approval and they need affection. Even 6' 5" 280 pound line backers.
They have to be protected. They need to be better informed. They need cool headed education from day one.
Not according to the Republicans.
I'm not a bible student. Maybe there's nothing in the bible about protecting the welfare of children.
Sarah Palin is a nightmare.
One of her decisions as mayor was to have the police charge rape victims for their rape kit examination . . . . She's strongly, vigorously on record demanding that rape victims who might sadly become pregnant be forced to carry the child to term . . . Clearly sexual predators are not inhuman monsters in her eyes.
People are actually still claiming that the "liberal media" are being unfair to her and McCain. What liberal media?
McCain lies all over the place and it should be ignored? And not ignoring it means you're a liberal?
McCain's incessant lying and rewriting of history being accepted as fact scares me. Its that old childish thing, "tell a lie three times and people will think its true." Its been proven effective for the Republicans since Nixon. Why change?
It does bother me that at his age McCain might not be able to tell what is the truth anymore. It would explain his stream of contradictory answers to things. Each moment he may be living in a different truth, like most of us.
Not being ageist just trying to understand how a man who purports himself to be a good man can be so many things that I typify as being a bad man.
Sarah Palin though: she's a pure monster. An ugly vile contemptible monster. Forgetting her bounty on wolves ($150 a leg . . .) Her vindictiveness and her Nazi like attempt to ban books, BOOKS! What is most vile is her attempt to suppress religious freedom.

Click images for desktop size: "Horrifique 2" by Unknown I do consider attempts to "cure" homosexuals and Jews as vile and an attempt to suppress religious freedom.
Its not that I find her religion so bizarre. All religions look bizarre to outsiders. The Catholic church with its ritualistic cannibalism would terrify an alien. It preaches against graven images but fills its churches with statues and graven images . . .
I'm sure that my own personal religion formed from years of Catholic catechism, zen learned from TV, movies, comic books and rock & roll seem freaky and other worldly to anybody outside of myself but that's cool. Its what I believe and I have a right to it.
It works for me and it doesn't interfere with you believing whatever you believe in.
When a religion preaches that you have to give them money or you're not allowed to believe or that it preaches intolerance of another's beliefs it stops being a religion to me. It becomes something ugly that is only an excuse to hate.
Palin, when she's not slurring dogs is slurring people and slurring those people's rights to believe what they chose to believe. She has argued that her faith is the true faith and that others are wrong! She argues so fervently that it seems clear that she will not allow me to believe what I chose, nor will she allow you to have your own personal religion.
She calls herself a "hockey mom". Which, I guess, is some bastardization of soccer mom. I always thought of soccer mom as a pretty pejorative term. It implies a woman who has no interest in sports but doesn't mind schlepping her kids around because she gets to socialize with other pampered upper middle class and upper class women where they can sit around and kvetch about their husband's career. It also implies a woman who's world of experience is so shut down that they can't envision another world.
I never viewed it as a compliment. I don't know of any women who embrace the term, until now. In fact I know many woman who resent being called soccer moms. They think its degrading.
It looks like the Republicans are going to steal the country from us and win the election. The rest of the world is amused or terrified. Unfortunately its our enemies who are amused and are friends and the neutral nations that are terrified.

Yesterday Apple released iTunes 8.
This is the worst piece of software Apple has ever released. It is draconian in the same way Microsoft is draconian. It is evil.
I'm not even talking about the way it begs for my complicity in sharing all my personal tastes and personality with them.
About 5 or 6 years ago, back in the days when OSX was called Jaguar, I think, Apple released an update that killed your internet connection! Not just mine but everyone who updated! I had to go to the public library and get the fix.
As ugly as that was most Apple users viewed it with wry amusement. We believed that Apple and its users were a team. This was just a mistake. We forgave and understood.
Then the iPod took off.
iTunes 8 is a cynical marketing ploy. Its contemptible.
One of the things I like about OSX is that its attractive, easy on the eyes, easy to work and concentrate without being overwhelmed with brutally ugly widgets and canvases.
iTunes 8 has decided that trying to trick me into impulse purchases is more important than me having my computer look the way I want it to look.
They've disabled some pretty basic functions. Some for no reason I can think of, some to turn iTunes into an advertising piece of spam.

Click images for desktop size: "The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari" Its unacceptable. By hacking around in the app I could get it looking presentable but then discovered that it renames all of my files and there is NO WAY to stop it. It does this for its convenience, not for mine. No way to keep my files named the way I want them named . . . how draconian. How Microsoft.
When this computer dies I will most likely get a much cheaper than Mac pc and run Ubuntu.
Apple is bending towards WalMart's ways and running the computers to the benefit of money and the iPhone. I bought the computer to work for me, not for them.
Oh, and there is no easy way to uninstall iTunes 8 and go back to iTunes 7. I know how to do it but I wonder if its worth the effort.
Nothing works better in iTunes 8. The only reason for the update was the Genius (!?!) bar and to add all the spam stuff.

With all my carping you might not believe it but I had a good day yesterday.
I took my ebike to my appointment with the High School head coach. That was pleasant and fun.
The interview was less so. Nothing wrong with it but I have some questions that I never got the clear cut concise answers I wanted.
I'm being understanding. As usual I'm trying to be careful and not be too understanding. I'm trying not to let my eagerness cloud my judgement.
My phone just buzzed to tell me that I had to recharge the battery. In that moment I was totally rushed thinking it was "the call".

Click images for desktop size: "African Desert" by Unknown The main problem is that the school can't afford to hire pure football coaches. They have teachers who've volunteered for unpaid overtime . . . I've been there before.
Teachers have a different perspective on the kids then a coach does. They should. They have different responsibilities and, while they do share some common goals they also have different goals. My concern is that the overwhelming goal be to the benefit of the kids.
Now I just get to wait for my phone to recharge then I'm biking to the store to get a couple can's of dog food!
Life is good and interesting even if the outside world isn't.

Posted by David at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Old Baseball In The Grass" by Sandra Cunningham I have a strange factoid: If USC were its own country (and there are plenty of people in LA, particularly on the West side, who already think we are) the Trojan athletes would have placed 13th in the medal standings at the Beijing Olympic Games and been tied for 8th in the Gold Medal standings.
I have no idea what that really signifies. It just seems cool. The past and present Trojans won 21 medals overall.
And I still wish USC was not ranked Number 1, at least not yet. I wanted Ohio State to come in with there uncompetitive schedule and be 7 point favorite. I want them at full strength so they couldn't offer up any more of their lame excuses when we throttle them. I hope we do beat them. I sort of like this years Men of Troy.

My friend went back to work today. I miss her a bit. I was rotten company on her 6 day weekend. I just kept feeling sicker and sicker. Its not that bad. Its really how I feel "normally" about three quarters of the time. I just didn't want to feel that way now.
We went and test drove cars today. She needs a new car. We can't come close to affording one but it was fun driving new ones.
We looked primarily at Hyundai's - The Tucson and the Santa Fe (plenty of room for dogs). And the Kia. I thought the Kia felt kind of tinny. The Nissan X-Trail was too big and kind of oppressive looking to me.
For the final dinner we grilled p two salmon steaks she marinated in some sort of glaze-y teriyaki sauce. We had them with wild rice. There was nothing to be cynical about while we ate.

Click images for desktop size: "Spiderman" by Marvel Comics We watched the great dog movie, "Soldier In The Rain". Its a cool movie that is inexplicably not available on DVD. I got a hold of a TV capture that was pretty low Q. The movie is so cool it doesn't need a great copy to be wonderful.
Watched intermittently the documentary about Hunter Thompson "Gonzo". Interesting stuff.
It made me sad that the country has ended up in exactly the state that a drunken, drugged out madman brilliant writer predicted. It was so easy to for see, and we let it happen anyway.
This Sarah Palin fiasco could not have been for seen. What a vile mess. And its been less than a week.
This woman wanted to BAN BOOKS!! She condemns to hell those who think differently than her. She abuses the power of her office for personal vindictive reasons and then because she wriggled through a legal loop hole she behaves like a career criminal and takes her "alleged" offenses even further. Actually, unless they were making good money most career criminals would have enough sense to walk away from a crime if they were lucky to walk away from it on a technicality. It takes a sociopath to continue on the same mad path, a sociopath with psychotic delusions of grandeur who would think that their wrong actions are excused by divine right.
McCain is an idiot but even he should know he needs to ask her to step down. The damage will clearly only increase.
Obama has behaved well throughout all this. He impressed me here. If only he believed in freedom and personal liberty I could vote for him. As it is I have to consider him as just the lesser of two evils.
I can't believe that none of the third party candidates have stepped up and clearly made a stand about all this insane stupid folderol. That they haven't makes them look even less attractive.
I might have to vote for Obama just to keep the country out of the mad man McCain's hands. People elected Bush. There are enough cowards to elect McCain and his hate filled savage Alaskan.
This morning I woke up to discover my iMac was having a system crash.
A corrupt coreservicesd file someplace. I rebuilt the launch services and tried everything else I could think of. So far it seems to be holding.
Very fatiguing.
I would suspect the dogs of sabotaging the computer. They did get an extra long walk today while I let the system files install and update.
I realized that there sabotage would include more bite marks. So I have to blame the guys up in Cupertino . . .
Who is Apple supporting in the election? Why?

Posted by David at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Before The Storm" by Vaclav Krivnek I learned computer on Macintosh. We used them for sound controllers and digital recordings in the studio. We also used Excel on them, back when Excel was Mac only.
I got frustrated with Mac for some pretty silly reasons I don't even recall and got a 386 Windows PC. It was madness but I'd spent the money. It did a good version of a Mac especially when playing Sim City. I didn't mind Lotus 1-2-3 and Text Adventure games were an okay diversion.
PC clones really couldn't compare to the hardware that Apple churned out. But Apple stuck to that dull one button mouse. It was easier to work in Black & White on Mac. The color was sort of dreary, even compared to VGA. So I went along with Windows up through Windows 95.
I messed around with Linux. I liked it but the sound recording and editing apps left a lot to be desired. Sound was a hassle in general.
Then along came BeOs. I loved it. I had to dual boot so I could use Sound Forge in Windows. Everything else I did in BeOs and smiled.
I understand how Microsoft fan boys can happen. You spend so much time learning how to make the computer work so it will do some mundane task that you get high faluting ideas about yourself. You think you're an expert. Linux was cool for somethings, especially scripting and some light programming but BeOs, I just did my work and didn't worry about anything else. It just worked.
The built in file indexing meant I never lost another file. Every chore was easy and working was just that, working, not crashing out, not dying
Click images for desktop size: "Reveries" by Maxfield Parrish and wiping out hours of work. I even loved getting error messages. They were always an thoughtful haiku.
Microsoft got busted big time for illegally destroying BeOs. They had to pay a huge fine that they didn't even appeal.
I wandered along with BeOs for a while but with no new development it seemed pretty futile. So I switched to Windows XP. I thought it was a huge kludge joke. It basically corrected the total ineptness of the Windows ME world and was hailed as . . . the solution.
I hated it.
A fellow named Scott something or other was the huge prophet for BeOs. He was a writer and programmer. He wrote some coolness scripts for mp3's for BeOs that I adored.
I read an article he wrote lamenting the passing of BeOs and guardedly suggesting that the new Mac OSX while not as complete as BeOs came close, making up for its shortcomings with some advantages (java support for one).
I got an iMac and gradually began to accept it. For music it had improved. For graphics it was tres cool. I feel in love with it when I got my 12 inch Power Book, that still runs well today.
I never looked back. Then the iPod became a huge cash cow, then the iPhone then . . .
When I got my new iMac (mostly as a gift), it came with a Mighty Mouse. The mighty Mouse is a beautiful looking thing. Apple's first TWO button mouse. The little scroll ball is a pleasure to use . . . for a while.
For some asinine reason Apple designed the Mighty Mouse in the same over priced disposable mode as their iPod. The problem is that the little scroll ball gets clogged quickly and easily. Even constant cleaning of your hands can't prevent it. Suddenly you can't scroll anymore.
Apple knows this happens. They have a web page devoted to cleaning the little scroll ball. it relieves the issue for a few days and then its back. No scrolling.
The cleaning process isn't that easy and its too stop gap. When you search the web the solutions for cleaning the little scroll ball are insane. One guy says he gets good results by filling the mouse with denatured alcohol and then whipping it around his head to clear out the gunk!
The other modes are insane and involve a few hours of bisecting flimsy plastic parts (and praying you can reassemble them and glue them well enough to work and not look too ugly) in order to clean the little rollers.
Apple clearly knows this is an issue. They're ignoring it.
As the Mighty Mouse runs about eighty bucks shipped this hardly seems like a disposable gadget. Considering I can get a logitech that's ugly and not as comfortable but WORKS for less than 20 bucks it seems either
Click images for desktop size: "Blue Morning" by Shifted Reality ridiculous or of the same arrogance that Microsoft has shown over the years. The get what you get and shut up attitude.
I've got two Mighty Mouses (Mice??) and I swap back and forth between them and then swap to the logitech when I get too frustrated.
With Apple's refusal to come down in price, the proliferation of iPods and iPhones and the increasing shoddiness of their supposedly high end line I notice that Ubuntu is free and looking better and better.

I've been getting castigated (even by adults) for not updating my puppy's web site. It's hard. For 10 months my puppy, my little blind dog and I were a trio. We had adventures together. Real adventures that fascinated the two of them, me and the kids who read her web site. We were going to have a big adventure hunting lions at the Lion's County Safari near us when the little dog passed away.
My puppy is doing fine she's still laughing and telling me bad dog jokes but its hard for me to get the joyousness that the little kids deserve and sometimes need.
Checking the logs her website normally averages 40,000 visitors a month. Its fallen to about 25,000 right now. I'm touched that a few thousand people are still watching the little movie about the little blind dog.
I'm working on it. Honest. I have to take the pictures and get into the mood. I'll try.
My friend has still been working insane hours. The 4 days lost to the Windows crash made her miss her deadline by one day. Still, she's closer than anyone else. I miss having her around.
Tomorrow the giant dog gets bathed and clipped. He's such a mess and his coat so heavy as to defy the consumer quality clippers that he gets to go to the groomer.
Its a car ride. All by himself. He'll be so pleased until he sees where we're going.
Totally stoked to watch all the videos of USC practices. I'm shocked at how well the defense is playing and even more shocked at how good the offense looks!
So far Mark Sanchez looks like the hype that surrounded him coming out of high school was less than he deserved. The O-Line makes mistakes but they are so fast its staggering! Speed can correct a lot of mistakes. Since they're almost all freshmen and the one returning starter is on the bench the unit is becoming less of a worry to me.
Twenty two days until Virginia. I can hardly wait.
I'm holding on well. Some pain but not so bad that I can't resist loading up on pain killers. Who could ask for more than that.

Posted by David at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Unknown I found some work. Its walking a dog for two days.
I like the dog plenty, a graying black mutt with happy blue eyes and a big desire to play. I don't like the woman who hired me. She's watching the dog for the owners who are in hospital. I probably would have liked them.
The woman described the owners as an "older couple". As in, she couldn't understand why an "older couple" got such a young dog . . . The little thing has to be at least 12. That's not young for a dog, even if the pup is spry and happy.
I used the money to buy some household necessities. That felt all right.
The woman who hired me left me notes I had to sign and date stamp . . . and there were spies noting my coming and going. I do wonder why they'd spy on me instead of just offering to take the dog out. He's a sweet thing and no trouble at all.
I didn't have keys to the house. She left the dog in a pen in the yard. Its a nice pen with plenty of water and shade plus a nice old school dog house. So it doesn't bother me too much that he has to spend time there. She still cried when I left her.
This lack of trust was something I hadn't counted on when I started running the ad. Thinking about it there really is no reason to trust me. Although I do think that offering to walk your dog would be a weird way to gain access as a house breaker.

Click images for desktop size: "Bonsai" by Le Revant I guess I either have to get to know more people for references or buy a bond or something. Both aren't bad ideas. I'll have to see if I can make more money to justify the bond. If I get enough customers to justify it I probably won't need it (the bond, I mean).
I'm tired. More from all the walking. It's like nearly two miles there. I wade it in 20 minutes, which is good but I ended up drenched in sweat by the time I got home. Really harsh big drop soak your shirt sweat. I'll recover.

On the home front I hacked the AppleTV. Not as complicated as it sounds. My main reason for doing this was to recover the stuff on the AppleTV that was lost when the PowerBook HD crashed.
For whatever reason Apple decided that the AppleTV would only sync one way. I suspect that was to keep people from sharing music and movies. Its the requirement for the iPods so it seems logical. Except the iPod is so ubiquitous that there are plenty of apps to let you recover your music from the iPod (I like Senuti - its free and does the job well and easily. Senuti doesn't even let you accidentally duplicate tracks or overwrite songs with old versions.)
Unfortunately there's no software to do the same thing for the AppleTV. So they only solution was to hack the thing. The hack enables SSH communication between the computer and the AppleTV. This is cool because I can now download all the lost music and photo's back to the PowerBook.
What isn't cool is that I can't figure out how to copy directories across a network so the files have to be dragged across one at a time, virtually. This is tedious but preferable to losing all that stuff.
The hack has a couple of other things I didn''t think I'd care about. One of them is to use SSH to put Xvid files on the AppleTV. It plays them flawlessly! This is handy for those oddball flics I want to see but have no desire to keep. It takes about 3 minutes to upload an Xvid avi to the AppleTV as compared to the four hours needed to convert it to avc.
The hack also allows for "Couch Surfing". Which I can't figure out the "why" for. Its a pain to input url's using the virtual keyboard and the Apple remote, but I looked at it anyway.
To install the hack was pretty no-brainer stuff. Its just formatting a memory stick, putting it in the USB port of the AppleTV and rebooting it.
The best thing is that the hack does nothing to harm the old functions of the AppleTV. I went into this with the attitude of do or die. I'd either get all the stuff of the machine or I'd lose it all. So leaving the data and old functions untouched is a real killer find for me.
It looks like the hack does it by
Click images for desktop size: "Vampi" by Frank Frazetta setting up a separate directory that leaves everything else untouched. This also means you can play with it pretty safely.
I'm happy with it.

I'm also happy as I got a very early birthday present. A cell phone. Its a pay as you go. You have to love that an impoverished guy has a cell phone.
With my serious iPod addiction I'll probably never hear it ring. Since I usually keep my cell phones in my back pack odds are I'll never feel it vibrate either . . .
Most of you are used to me never answering my phone and no matter how frustrated you get with me, you still call. Thanks for that.
Now there's a new shiny way for me to be rude to my friends . . .
I'm very happy about it and with it.

Posted by David at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "I'm Melting" by Janet Tangus I didn't find any money yesterday.
I did get to change shirts twice. Sweated through a cotton button down and two T-shirts. Too hot for me. People always think that LA is hot. It's not. Its just fine.
My friend is feeling "improved" which I think is the same as better, but I wouldn't count on that. Last night she finally played with the AppleTV. She discovered Jack White on YouTube. She was particularly taken with the Raconteurs' version of Cher's "Bang Bang". The Raconteurs version seemed more based on the Nancy Sinatra cover than the original.
I was just glad to see her having fun and being excited by her various discoveries.
There's a band I love that a lot of people seem to hate: Guitar Wolf. They have a lot of videos on YouTube as well. There's one in particular "I Love You, OK". Its a solo, just Guitar Wolf (The band is Guitar Wolf, the members are Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf - keeps things simple, doesn't it?) on electric guitar rasping and growling through a vicious number that I guess is a love song. He sings it in Japanese so I can't really say for certain.
As Guitar Wolf slams his guitar around and growls in a controlled apoplectic fit at the mike the song always appears about to disintegrate into low level noise but he fights and wrestles it back to the pounding chords and the inchoate melody so that the chorus, "I love you, OK" floats between being a demand to an insane plea. I like the way he fights to control himself, the guitar and his voice. It gets close to a Lichtstenian ideal of art. To me at least. Most people just wonder how I can put up with all that white noise guitar and screeching. I can. I do. I like it plenty.
I've always liked Guitar Wolf. I even liked their movie: "Wild Zero". It was an insane bit of film made for no budget. It swiped the plot from "Plan 9 From Outer Space". Yes, that "Plan 9" worst film ever made, "Plan 9".
The plot is that an alien invasion is presaged by converting earthlings into the living dead, ZOMBIES FROM SPACE!
Guitar Wolf aren't even the real heroes. The hero is a Japanese kid who wears leather and dresses like Elvis. He wants to be Guitar Wolf, the entire band.
There's a beautiful drag queen, a beautiful ninja warrior, a crazed club owner with a penchant for wearing hot pants, and enough gore and zombie head explosions to satisfy the most jaded zombie freak out there (like me). There's also plenty of Guitar Wolf music, J-Pop and the band driving around Japan raising their fists defiantly to the alien space ships and shouting their war cry "lock and lor". Its a great ultra low budget movie. If Guitar Wolf hadn't done anything else I'd have become a fan. As it is they've done nothing to disgrace the image.

Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Robert Crumb I've always like Japanese rock. I lost my collection of Shonen Knife with the hard drive crash. Thy started me into it. Then The 5-6-7-8's got famous when Tarentino exploited them for Kill Bill. They were the coolest thing in the movie, dressed in gold Dragon Lady dresses and bare feet slapping out the beat of "Woo Hoo". They've always been pretty big in Japan. I like their covers, like "Wooly Bully" is a hoot and their take on Tommy James' "Hanky Panky" is enthusiastically original.
There's a great Japanese compilation album called "My Summer Love". It features a couple dozen of the best female hard rock/punk bands in the country. It some how always strays into J-Pop territory, which is fine by me. There are plenty of good to great tracks on the disc. For me the most atypical is The Pebbles doing "I Love You Baby". Everything you need to know about The Pebbles and most of the girl groups in Japan is all right there in the sound waves. If you have any unanswered questions you can clear them up with a fast listen to The Bunnies cover of "Let's Dance". For me this is high art becasue its intended to me nothing but fun and a reminder of the joy of being young.
The Japanese compilation brings to mind that classic USA comp, "Now Just The Girls". The American's are more driving and wear their influences a whole lot more subtly but they have a base iconography that's pure bliss. Candypants doing "Nerdy Boys" has more in common with The Bunnies and Jan and Dean than Metallica and I approve.

I'm not going to look for money today. Too hot for me. My blood is too thin and used to dry heat. The kind of heat that dehydrates all these bugs!
We need money but the situation is serious and not desperate.
There's no danger of having no home. The bills are paid. The mortgage is current. That just doesn't leave any free room for luxuries like food. I don't drink so that's cool and I loaded up on a coupon item so I've plenty of Diet Dr Pepper so I can feel like I'm drinking like the rich.

Its been a month today that my little blind dog passed away.
I still check under the chair to make sure I don't roll it over him when I get up. I still miss him huffing behind me following me everywhere I go. Getting mad at me for not just sitting down and staying put for a while.
I'm taking the 3 dogs on a walk to the post office. I miss how excited he'd always get even when he was walking into telephone poles.
I wish he'd come back.

Posted by David at 11:49 AM | Permalink

Click images for desktop size: "Bird In Branches" by Unknown Its going to be a beautiful day today.
The sun is bright. It won't be too warm. The air is cleansed by the storms.
The house still beats empty. The loss of the little blind dog is still keenly felt.
The absence of vivacious house guests and an extra tentative puppy is still noticeable.
Th constant explosions of fireworks and mini-bombs still has the pack in a constant state of ill ease. The Gentle dog put himself in the bathroom and even closed the door to shut out both the silence and the explosions.
Still, its going to be a beautiful day today.

Beautiful day means I finally get to do some laundry. The dryer is busted. It was mangling clothes. Really mangling and ripping them apart. Now have to do the old clothesline trick.
Drying clothes in the sun isn't that big of a pain. Main thing is having to remember to put clothes softener in. Clothes dry really stiffly on the outside in nature. Fabric softener reduces that to a tolerable level.
The biggest issue, especially in a house filled with dogs, is no lint removal!
It feels like a "rich man's complaint" carping about having to haul clothes around and clip them to a rope. It could be worse. It just feels strange having my rigid schedules dictated by something as arbitrary as sunshine and nature.
You all know its my rigid schedules that let me cope with the fluid unpredictable world. So this feels different . . .

Yesterday was not eventful. Well, it was the way life has a way of always being eventful
I have a doc appointment tomorrow. Just a physical. Had to get ready for that. Two days in advance . . . I LIKE rigid schedules!
I have to eat muesli. I don't like it much but I got to eat it sometimes. One of the nuts wedged against a tooth, one of the loose teeth I've been fighting to preserve . . . mainly out of vanity.

Click images for desktop size: "Coagulation" by dDefinder It wedged and bent it. The tooth still in in there. It looks jagged and like it should be wearing braces. It looked bad before but now it looks worse and its uncomfortable.
I still don't want to just let it fall out. I don't think I can tolerate losing another part of me, even one so small. And because its in front . . .
I thought muesli was supposed to be good for me.
The giant dog disappointed. Not really. I think he was tired of hearing how good and trustworthy he'd become. He stole a bag of dried banana chips from the table and ate them. Didn't make him sick. I guess that's alright. His breath smells like monkey's.
My puppy is clamouring for an adventure. Fortunately her idea of adventure is going to the park and maybe getting pizza!
Low expectations are usually pretty easy for me to fulfill. Its the real stuff that gives me a problem.
Watched a couple of movies. Generally amusing was "Godzilla and Mothera: Battle For The Earth". It was cool because it focused on all these serious environmental issues. The earth was attacking, well, the earth, because of insane developers and fossil fuels! It had great lines in it like, "The Planet Earth is trying to destroy us because of our arrogance!"
Why the Planet Earth chose a giant moth who shoots laser beams as its agent of destruction is some speculation to avoid.
The watched a rather dreary Japanese "Battle Royale" rip off - "Kill Devil". It was pointless. Still it had two scenes that I liked a lot. One made no sense. Two guys we'd never seen before (or after) are in a cell and start to do a beat box rap and dance. It was stunningly impressive.
Then after everyone in the film is dead . . . how dreary . . . they somehow come back to life to end the movie with a totally out of place 7 minute dance routine. The dancing was modern ballet and hyper-cool. I just have no idea what it was intended to mean.
Finally. I installed the new MacOSX update:
Click images for desktop size: "Ruslane Korshunova" by Unknown Leopard 10.5.4. This appears to be more in getting Mac's ready for the 2nd gen iPhone, so I had moderate interest. I've been running it for 12 hours and it seems fine. I don't notice anymore extra stability, but its not crashing or giving me the spinning beach ball so it seems okay. I did notice it gives you some extra and welcome information when your repairing permissions (something I guess you're supposed to do every/any time you update the OS) but nothing flashy or insanely cool.
I'm more interested in the upcoming iTunes. I'm hoping it gets more stable and uses less memory while holding more securely to the networking with the AppleTV.
Just have to see.
And still a bit concerned over network and internet security in general. Since the WordPress site got hacked I had an inexplicable invasion on the iMac. Still studying that.
So, now its time to remark: Its going to be a beautiful day.

Posted by David at 9:59 AM | Permalink

Click images for desktop size: "She Did It Here" by Anonymous The house feels empty.
House guests are gone. My little blind dog is still gone. No canine resurrection.

The visit was nothing but fun, except for the mad and scrupulous house cleaning that proceeded it . . . and the scary StarBucks Incident!
When my friends touched down I met them with my puppy. At first her brother and she were glad to meet then he tried to mount her (dominance mounting, not sexual - they're both neutered) and she snapped at him. Her brother took that pretty seriously.
We drove back to the house so her brother could meet the other two dogs. After the 12 hour drive to a new world I guess her brother needed to feel in control of his life again. He got nippy with the Giant Dog who snapped back. The Gentleman dog decided this was all a lot of fun and joined in! It only lasted a second but it seemed to have embedding into her brother's engrams.
We took a walk together. For some reason I had to walk all three dogs . . . and the trio and my puppy's brother were all just fine. But he stayed wary of the three of them for the rest of the visit.
We went home and got presents! Nothing better than a guest bearing gifts! I got vital supplies and my puppy got treats and MORE treats.
My puppy thinks anyone with treats and food is doubly privileged. They not only get to look upon her but feed her as well. My puppy loves her food.
We started the next morning with a visit to StarBucks. It wasn't StarBucks fault, really. I got a Vanilla Latte with skim milk and sugar free vanilla. It hit my system all wrong. I've had it happen in the past with different foods and drugs so it wasn't terrifying but it makes things uncomfortable for me.
Its the feeling that your whole body is hollow, ringingly achingly so. It feels most uncomfortable in your head and in your thorax. Its maddening.

Click images for desktop size: "Skylines" by Turi Before it got too bad we checked out a nearby pet store that someone had recommended but that I'd never been in before. They had FREE FOOD SAMPLES. I love free samples.
I spoke briefly with the store owner. She had some pictures she'd just printed out of her dogs, including one that had just passed away. She wasn't prepared to see the picture of her dog and got misty. She couldn't control it.
I plan to try and shop there.
The rest of the day was a bit blurry for me. We must have walked a lot. We had lunch and I remember some well meaning nagging about what I ate, but I don't remember what we ate.
I do remember dinner. My friend is a cool chef and he made a Carnival Of Shrimp Redux. Not as wonderful as the original Carnival Of Shrimp but still very memorable in its own right. The grilled shrimp and vegetables cut right through my haze.
The dogs appeared to have a calm truce mode going on. My three behaved as usual but my puppy's brother stayed diffident and overtly cautious around the three of them. Once he tried to play with his sister but when the other two showed an interest he backed off and went into slunk mode.
We went to bed too late. I woke the next day feeling no better. As the day progressed the haze parted enough for me to feel irritable. Some of you know what I mean, its that time when you swear you can feel the air molecules driving painfully into your skin. The hollowness lingers but the joints become real solid feeling and painful.
We went to a farmer's market, flea market sort of thing. I remember that there were a lot of Irish Mennonites there. For some reason it struck me as odd. I liked the lyrical Irish accent while they were hawking their fruit and vegetables.
After the flea market we went to the town. It was a huge effort to stay erect. My hips were screaming as were my shoulders and arms.
I did notice that there were a lot of interesting styles to the Mennonite carriages in the town. Some were junkers, some were limousines, even saw a two horse racing style buggy and a tiny buggy that looked more like a coffin then a mode of transportation. I wondered if the driver was shy or hated the world. There were only small slits for vision and I guess ventilation. All of the buggies were painted a monotonous flat black. They looked dingy against the bright sunny sky. Not secular or spartan just dingy.

Click images for desktop size: "Aladdin" by Maxfield Parrish I don't remember what else we did that day and evening. I could feel my body coming back to me. Like a leg thats cramped and fallen asleep it wakening made me irritable and hostile and resentful. No reason for it except the chemicals that make me be alive I guess.
I do remember being concerned about my puppy's brother. My Giant Dog was becoming very enamored of him in a very positive way. While the two of them attempted to play anytime that the other two tried to join in her brother would scurry back into the house. I found this distressing.
I woke up the next day and felt more like myself but still nasty and irritable. Very black thoughts. Heck, maybe nasty and irritable is my old self.
We went to a forest preserve to walk the pack. It was fun.
All the dogs got along splendidly united in their mutual desire to good naturedly kill me.
It was a long hot walk but I felt much better for it. We saw a turtle and a toad, which are highlights grand enough to make mine or any dog's week.
That evening my friends all sounded like they were having a world of fun making gluten free perogis. Perogis are Polish kind of like raviolis. They were up until 3. It sounded like they were having fun. I sat in the office fiddling about, not doing much of anything except recovering and talking to the dogs who kept coming to check on me, or who wanted me to get up and give them some sample perogis. It was definitely one or the other.
I slept well that night. The next day we went to the near by big city. Scoped out about a mile of outlet stores and the area China Town.
I like big cities. I like looking at people and seeing buses and traffic. It was okay. I was surprised when they found me shops selling Asian DVD's 10 for 20 dollars and as I looked through the racks I discovered I had all of them already . . .
That evening we enjoyed the Festival Of Perogis. They were different than the ones I remembered. But they were okay and it was easy to enjoy all the enjoyment around me. Everybody was cranked over them. My friend especially. She'd been waiting 11 years to have perogis again. They talked a lot about gluten free dough and such. The dogs kept offering to try them and give their opinion . . .
Our guest, the chef, only had one serving. He said he wanted to save the rest for my friend. She was touched by that.
The little memorial for my little blind dog showed up. Its a book of photo's is all, hard bound
Click images for desktop size: "Untamed Love" by Frank Frazetta with a pretty dust cover.
iPhoto has a very idiot proof button to push that will take a group of selected photos and arrange them within a template.
I use Aperture (although I usually use Lightroom - Adobe supports my inexpensive RAW shooting Fuji and Apple doesn't!! Apple supports RAW files natively, but each camera manufacturer has their own secret spec. Apple only bothers with the RAW formats in the 800 bucks and up class) and it gives a tighter control over the templates and design of the thing, even allowing you to go outside of the app to tweak and twiddle.
My friend didn't want to look at it. This disappointed me but makes sense. I needed the catharsis of creating it of dreaming about my little blind dog. She needs the space to deal with her own grief.
I checked the book through and it looks very well done. It looks slick and professional and exactly like the pdf file I laid out. It seemed expensive at the time, but only because we're so poor. In hand it feels very much worth it. For me at least it will be a place to always know my little blind dog exists.
Memories are not life but memories are sometimes all that survives. The little 20 page book should do that: make the memories real.
And then it was time for our guests to leave. Maybe they didn't like sleeping in the closet . . . well, it is the only room we have!
All the dogs were getting along. The giant dog had a new best friend and decided he loved our guests. All the dogs were sad to see them leave. It was too soon. My Giant Dog was committed to stowing away and visiting his best-est friends. Luckily he's pretty inept at everything except laughing and being big so he didn't quite pull it off.
So now the house feels twice as empty for everyone. The fireworks have already started so the pups are on edge. The storms and the heat are uncomfortable but for me, at least, feels better than whatever is in a "skinny sugar-free latte".
I liked having friends around. I don't even mind them leaving so long as they keep on being.

Posted by David at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Velocity" by Jan Vic The weekend.
My friend got out of of seminar so she got an extra day off. We had fun. We cooked mee krob together.
If you don't know mee krob involves deep frying rice noodles and stuff. All the oil made me sort of sick but it was still enjoyable as was the whole day. Sometimes its nice to have a day where very little is accomplished and all there is is peace.
She got to play some on her resuscitated Powerbook. Mucho disappointment over all that was lost. Tempered with the vague thrill of, "Now I'll set this thing up right!"
One thing she's doing that I like is turning all of her dock and folder icons into "Pooch Cafe" icons. Poncho is tres cool. For Safari (Mac's web browser) she even found a surfing Poncho!
Even though the Powerbook doesn't have enough juice to run Leopard, Tiger (OSX 10.4.11 - I love goonie numbers) is still very rock solid and robust.
She's having some fun.
I also spent the day doing storm recovery work. This basically was picking up dog feces and throwing things at trees to knock the fallen branches free so they don't fall and whack a dog in its noggin.
I had the iPod on and realized I'm out of new music. That's not a bad thing at all. It means that I get to listen to a whole lot of my favorites, songs I neglected in my fear of missing the next great tune.
I like pop. I like bubblegum a lot. Bubblegum was a 60's kind of music dedicated to making the little girls scream and shout. Its the same energy the Pice Girls tried to callously and shallowly politicize with their bogus "Girl Power" trip.
The Ramones did a few klazzik bubble gum covers! Did them well too.
No one has ever covered the 1910 Fruitgum Company's "The Train". I like the track a lot. Alongside The Rare Breed's "Beg Borrow And Steal" you get a decent image of bubblegum and an interesting view of how the 60's viewed women in the throes of the dawn of feminism. Meaning they ignored it so well they made sure it was inevitable.

Click images for desktop size: "Women's Figure" Of course any "movement" in music had its follower's who barely had a clue of what the sound was all about. The nice thing about bubble gum was that the genre is itself was so vacuous that even its most vapid practitioners could produce cool, catchy little bouncy numbers, like Daddy Dewdrop's "Chick A Boom" and The Buchanan Brothers "Medicine Man". Songs that had no pretensions other than to make people dance about and earn a few dollars are always welcome in my book.
Part of bubble gum's appeal is how nuts it made the hippies with its crass commercialism and how furious it made the "serious" players who were envious of the genre's wide play and popularity. Most of those serious musicians I knew were into playing authentic blues . . . singing about their life picking cotton in the LA River Delta . . . I guess.
Its fun seeing someone dead serious get spluttery and red faced about something that is by its own definition totally insubstantial.
And there's always surf music. Paul Johnson's DuoTones project is still awesome. Johnson was one of the originals. His "Mr Moto" is an awesome klazzik tune. But what he does with the old surf standard "Baja" is a tour de force.
I've known a lot of good guitarists who couldn't get the sync between right and left hand playing and palm muting working on this tune. I've even seen a couple of guitarists rig a mute out of a handkerchief to avoid having to contend with this trickiness and this was on ELECTRIC guitars with skinny necks, low action and slinky strings! That Johnson does it on an acoustic steel string is a frightening testament to virtuosity.
Today I predict a good day. Rotten weather but a good day.
I got some coupons in the mail. Big sales at THREE different pet stores!! Okay, I think shopping for dog toys is valid and IMPORTANT FUN!
Then my friends parents invited us to dinner! FREE FOOD justifies spending money on puppy toys!
Then there's that coupon for half off "Glow In The Dark" miniature golf . . .

Posted by David at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "The Bride Of Frankenstein" by Universal Studios Friday the 13th started off with a power outage . . .
It crashed my network badly and I've spent over 5 hours restoring it. Of course, I could have done it in about an hour or less but I made a mistake and called customer service.
Even that's not completely their fault. I blanked on the fact that the reason I hate my Linksys router is that every time there's a quick blackout, a second or less, it wipes out all the settings even though it makes it appear as if the settings are all there.
The end result was I reset everything to its factory defaults and started from point zero. That sorted everything out fine.
That's my other complaint with Linksys. Every time I get incredibly frustrated with the router I end up getting it fixed and then I forget about replacing it until the next time . . .
We did cancel the old ISP.
Amazingly the new marketing practice in America is to wait until you cancel a service then offer it to you again at the price you possibly should have been paying. They offered to lower the price to 35 bucks a month if we didn't cancel . . . that's still twice as much as we're paying now . . .
The restoration of The Powerbook Hard Drive continues apace. It feels desolate, like trying to see what can be salvaged from the fire.
The oddest thing is that music stored on the Apple TV can't be used to restore a crashed HD.
I don't think I like the implication of that at all. I blame the RIAA.
The weekend promises to be better.
Been invited for a free early dinner. Got coupons for doggie stuff and a half price round of indoor glow in the dark miniature golf.
I hope it uses black light and that full price is less than 5 bucks.

Posted by David at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Home" by Unknown Its been a bad past few days. Maybe not that bad but hard to know that at the time.
One of the near disasters was the old G4 12' Inch Powerbook had a nasty hard drive issue. The "Invalid symlink" error.
The prescribed methods of fixing it didn't work. Eventually the HD wouldn't boot. It wouldn't even boot off of the CD drive . . .
By hooking the Powerbook to the iMac with the Firewire cable (Apple is moving towards discarding Firewire ports which is scary. They offer a lot more than USB 2. Speed shouldn't be the only concern. And Firewire is still faster!) I was able to access the Powerbooks dead HD. There was nothing I could do to get any of the data (and no backups!) so the only thing left was to try and reformat the drive. I was lucky. I was able to reformat it and re-install Tiger.
I've been using the FileSalvage app to try and get back as much data as possible. About 50% roughly speaking . . . all with names like 1057.jpg, or 6572.m4a . . .
I bought the Powerbook years ago. It cost about two grand so you can tell how old it is by the sheer fact I could actually afford 2 grand. When it comes close to death I suddenly feel a pang. I realize how attached and fond I am of the little machine.
I gave it to my friend a couple of years ago. I guess it shows how fond I am of her as well. She's used it as her everyday ever since, after a lifetime of Windows machines she has learned to love the Mac with a fervor that matches my own and she also looks fondly at the little 12" inch G4 Powerbook.
Long may it live.
Then this morning I awoke to find an e-mail from the hosting service.
They had terminated this domain due to violation of terms of service . . . Bluehost was very quick in responding to me.
The WordPress installation had been hacked and the hacker had inserted a php attacking virus, hence the need to shut it down ASAP.
I was not so upset not to be impressed that they had found the hack so quickly.

Click images for desktop size: "Reclining Nude" by Edward Hopper The only part of the site I run on WordPress was the old blog, "The Long Goodbye". It was very popular even though I hadn't updated it in nearly 2 years. I had plans to put a couple of things up so I updated to the latest version of WordPress, version 2.5.
I just found out that 2.5 had 3 major security holes and that millions of them were hacked within the first week of installation. I could have updated to the recent WordPress 2.5.1 which repairs the holes but it seemed more expedient to simply delete the thing.
Its another reason to prefer MovableType. I prefer perl to php and even if I find php more confusing than cgi I'm alone in that. Most of the kiddie hackers get bewildered by perl. I've no idea why that is. I guess it the same reason that most of the attacks servers seem to withstand are directed at Windows servers and fail against Mac and linux servers.
Anyway, the sites back up (obviously).
Then yesterday I saw that the cat was spassing out. I figured she was close to death. I sat with her while she trembled and stared blankly.
She's an old cat. I don't like cats. No reason. I just don't. Even if they like me first.
I also don't think any living thing deserves to die alone or rolling in the mud. I'm not that tough. So I gathered her up in a towel and sat with her.
She put up with it and kept staring blankly and trembling.
My friend said to call the vet and see about euthanasia. They wanted about 300 dollars for the task . . . the Humane society only wanted seventy five . . . it seems a sick sort of thing to make such a huge profit off of.
It also went some way to explaining why so many people dump ill pets off at the shelter knowing they'll be put down. I don't recall how much I was charged the last time I had to have a pet put down. Its too traumatic an event for me to recall that sort of trivial detail.
Anyway being poor might have been a salvation. Under my friends tender ministrations the cat made it through the night. She's moving around. Wobbly but alert and jumping about some. Even eating.
Then there was the major upset.
I suddenly realized how vulnerable I am. Which is ironic because the upset was caused primarily by insecurity and pride.
Stupid pride.
One thing about us people things . . . well, its one thing to be able to look at yourself and see yourself as you are, to look at yourself and know your strengths, weakness, ills and secrets.
Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Dark Art Its something different to have another person know all those things and accept you and love you. We all say we want that but what I've noticed is that we always want the person to love that idealized image we tend to carry of ourselves.
Its hard when someone knows all your secrets, "even the secrets you don't know they know" and still loves you.
That's trivializing things some but my brain has been exploding too much to be more exact.
Brain exploding and too much to do. I guess that's another definition of life. Its like the grass growing taller while you try and figure out how to fix the lawn mower.

Posted by David at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "End Of Daze" by Envy A couple of weeks a go we found a robin's nest in one of the trees. The bird built the thing at about my chest height . . . There were 3 eggs in it. Pretty pale blue things.
I thought at the time that this was no good but urban myth says you can't touch or move a bird's nest.
Last week the nest was there but the eggs were gone. I felt deprived.
Stupid bird.

The new internet provider is now on board. They claim it was up and working since the 31st . . . I have no idea how they figured I would know this.
Anyway, it took me the full day to get everything up and running. By paying a year in advance the ADSL is about 1/3rd the price we were paying. My router generates about 10% stronger signal than the one the Slipstream the old ISP made us use, with about 50% less noise on the broadcast. For those two things alone it was worth making the move with the savings just slightly over riding the increased range.
Both Mac's and the Apple TV were no brainers to get up and running on the new router config. The AppleTV particularly likes the stronger signal. My router is G, as are the WiFi cards in all our computers. The AppleTV is the only thing in the house running draftN. Still with the increased signal the AppleTV loads things from the computer much more quickly and far less stutter on the 5mgs on some of the movie files.
This is a pretty bare bones service. You get some email addresses and some one line storage but nothing else.
Even though their customer service is good the bare bones thing could inhibit growth. The modem works out of the box ONLY if you plan to plug it in via the ethernet cable. Does anyone do that anymore?
To set the DSL modem up into bridge mode was a tremendous chore. This house is old so phone jacks and outlets are at a premium. I had to keep climbing ladders to set up the modem, test it, figure out what was wrong and then go through the grief of reconnecting to to the computer - back and forth.
Once I figured it out it wasn't all that difficult but setting up keep alive times and establishing MTU (what the hell is an MTU anyway?) was all guesswork.

Click images for desktop size: "Sits Down Far Away" by Unknown But it works.
The other pluses for the new ISP are corporate guarantees of Net Neutrality, and no traffic shaping. I don't put a lot of faith in corporate promises but at least they put it out there and in writing.
As to performance it seems to be okay. There is a slight decrease in download speed overall but with higher spike speeds, much higher like 200%. The upload speed is like 300% higher than the old provider! Since this all come through the same DSL line the effects of bandwidth shaping are pretty apparent. No problems at all with my normal internet stuff.
Its too early to define the reliability of the connection. I've had one complete outage that lasted for only 5 minutes. Time will have to tell on that.
Basically I'm happy with the new provider. Its a shame I had to do so much work to find an alternative provider, alternative to the biggies who even now are working or charging for the megabyte of bandwidth. The old charge 'em more for less gambit. Funny it works when you have corrupt local and national politicos who are willing to let a monopoly get away with this stuff.
The other shame was the lack of instructions on setting the DSL modem up for basic home networking. That seems like a quibble on the next day but yesterday it was bugging me bad.
Emails today admonished me to save and dry the maple branches because they are the best wood going for smokers! Maybe I should chip them up and sell them! Around here there are too many maple trees. If I was successful it could start a deforestation thing, so I'll just save them up.
The other emails (4) wanted instruction on making your own guitar from scratch!
I've only done it twice. One when I was 16. I made it in high school wood shop. Plenty of power tools paid for by the government!
The second time when I was 22 and I had a friend who's dad spent a fortune on his workshop.
Making two questionable guitars doesn't make me much of an expert. But I did make them and futzed through the whole procedure so maybe it might be useful.
I'll give it some thought.
Its supposed to hit 90 today . . . means mucho work outside!
That will make the puppies happy. They like to boss me around. But doesn't everybody . . .

Posted by David at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Electrogoth" by Envy Since I've had access to the AppleTV i haven't even turned on a DVD player . . . odd that.
It makes me realize the importance of senses and the anthropological psychology of our senses.
Like we've all allowed to have rather lousy memories for sounds. We've all had a friend who we thought had died because we kept hearing the same song pour out of his bed room window, over and over again.
When you finally break in you find out there was nothing wrong. He just dug the tune. Couldn't get enough of it.
Or we've gotten into a car with a friend who played the same track over and over again, all the way to wherever you two were going and you were probably glad it wasn't any further.
If we'd evolved with auditory memory that matched our visual memory we wouldn't be able to do that.
Its like you can listen to a live concert of your fave band a few times without even blinking, but you'd be hard pressed to watch a video of the same show more than once or twice. You'd get bored and relate to editing gaffes instead of watching. Most often you'd end up reading and listening, or looking at anything except the image.
Its part of the power of paintings and photographs I guess, the ability to take you someplace, someplace new or the same familiar place, each time you gaze at a painting even though you know every pixel of the painting by heart. There's more than a certain genius to that, or else we'd all live in bare walled holes.
Our sense of smell is pretty terrible and we only seem to recall smells that are bad or great - a cess pool or your mom's cooking. Even though scents have a way of bringing up a bigger and wider range of emotional responses from us that come closer to re-experiencing the reality of a moment, of all moments connected to a scent.
And touch? Unless its connected to pleasure or pain who remembers a touch. Its why we can do all those cool nasty tricks with peeled grapes and things at Halloween.
All of that is why I don't get to stressed about my little blind dog sitting happily two inches from a wall, apparently staring at it happily.

Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Frank FrazettaWith as much effort as we put into communicating with aliens from outer space we don't put much time into communicating with the aliens we share the planet with. John Lilly, a cool enough guy, is the only one I know of who's tried to talk to dolphins.
Dolphins need talking to. There are legends about dolphins rescuing drowning people at sea. Every surfer has a story about some dolphin harassing or playing with them.
(Mine involved the dolphin with a nasty sense of humor. I was on dawn patrol when I saw a gray fin break the water line and come rushing at me. I pulled my feet up on the board and was getting ready to punch the shark in the nose . . . I read in a comic book or saw on TV about how sharks had real sensitive noses and you could not them out with the right punch! The fin submerged. I looked around fearfully and waited for panic when my board was suddenly capsized from underneath. I thought I was fish meat. When I broke the surface the dolphin was up there laughing at me. Laughing at me . . . he spent the day catching every wave I caught and being a real pain in the neck. He seemed to love it best when he could cut me off and create a wipe out . . .)
There an animal with intelligence, at least as much intelligence as the gorillas who've communicate pretty effectively with sign language.
We don't pay much attention to this except as freak show stuff, like the tic tac toe playing chicken. I think it makes us uncomfortable. We're not a very secure species, still clinging to the worries of survival and junk like it. We relate to animals best when we feel comfortably superior and can easily humanize them, at least to our conscious minds.
It seems easy to love something we are in total control of and can give ambiguous human traits to. Its a bit harder to love something that is alien to us. Like a dog.
When my little blind dog stares at the wall with a happy grin on his snuffling face he might not see the wall but I imagine he's got a world of other things to get so lost in. Smells that I can't guess at but that tell him stories and sing him songs. I'm sure he can hear noises that ell him absorbing dog stories, or else why is he so easy to startle when I call to him.
He likes to stay close to me because the other dogs don't tread on him. I'm the for sure alpha dog around this house anyway.
He knows I'm the source for food and pets. And in some canine way he loves me. That doesn't mean the blind little guy doesn't try and escape at every given opportunity. Not to run away but to go find new smells and to hear new things.
This is all the junk you think about on a rainy Sunday morning. Nasty cold day so that even the dogs don't want to go outside.
I need to heal. I think I've been tearing my body up pretty badly with all the yard work. My hamstrings are singing off key
Click images for desktop size: "Feeling My Age" by Anonymous arias to my calves and my hands are clenching and cramping begging to rest.
So it might be just time to watch a lot of movies. Consider finances.
I going to move the house internet connection from the monster monopoly phone company to an independent ISP . . . I'm nervous about this. The internet is the way I communicate, get information and survive and function, I think. Since were doing that we're also going to dump the land line and go to VOIP. I had Vonage before. The service was a tick better than acceptable. It would have been fine except the customer service department were the biggest jerks ever. Sales people should not be called customer service. It bothers me when I understand a tech better than the paid employees who are supposed to trouble shoot the problem, and keep wanting me to buy more services when I struggling with the existing services, but maybe this time it will be okay.
I have to figure out finances. Its a logistical issue with my credit cards and cash availalbe. Th savings become significant if I pay for a year in advance. I mean like over a grand for the year significant. But its hard to come up with the front money. Got to figure it out. Which isn't that big a deal. I just hope the service works well enough.
Other than that I plan to watch movies and sleep during most of the boring bits. I still haven't ordered or rented a movie through the AppleTV. It looks easy enough and maybe its time to try. The 99 cent movie special this week is "The Usual Suspects", which is entertaining enough and my eyes are bad enough to not remember enough of it so its a thought. Of course when I've got about 100 movies I haven't seen yet renting one just to check out the tech is a bit frivolous, even if it is only a buck . . .

Posted by David at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Circles" by Aleksander Makimow Today is an international holiday!
Isn't it?
It's my puppy's birthday. She has a full itinerary lined up.
I'm not kidding. I'm expected to participate and to enjoy myself fully. It all culminates with a big surprise party with a new taste treat promised. French fries ala mode with beef gravy . . . Its a surprise party because my puppy seldom listens to much I talk about.

Yesterday I cleaned my keyboard. It had gotten beyond gross.
The last time I cleaned my keyboard I killed it. Totally and irrevocably killed it. So I was, understandably reticent to try it again.
I used the utmost care, swabbing each key gently with pure alcohol and a Q-Tip. And needless to say I killed it again.
Since a new keyboard is at least 50 bucks I thought a lot about the prudence of Mac clones and how Ubuntu really looks like a decent alternative.
This time it appears that the keyboard had gotten so gunky that the residue from my swabbing had caused some of the gunk to shift under the board to the contacts so it was working as if I was constantly pressing the command (Mac only) control -alt-shift key. Which made for some interesting results.
I pried all the keys off and re-swabbed. Then re-integrated. I then took my puppy and my little blind dog for a quick walk and came back to find out that it had dried out and started working again.
I am a genius at breaking stuff. Fortunately I am still half a genius at fixing stuff.
If only I could get my ebike running . . .

During all this my mind drifted, as it generally does. I was thinking about a mediocre science fiction book I'd read years ago. I got it from the Charing Cross library in London. I've never seen it any where else or heard it talked about. I don't remember the author or the title of the book. They only had volume one of a series. I don't know how many books in the series, but it was called "The Amtrak Wars".
Click images for desktop size: "Pinup" by Unknown I originally thought it was about our decrepit train system but it was about an intergalactic war!
It was pretty tedious stuff but it had one wonderful conceit. It predicted that human beings were the most dangerous and aggressive warriors in the galaxy. That even a middling small nerd type had twice as much endurance, strength, speed and blood lust than the previous galactic champions.
That was very appealing to me. I figure if you added a Belgian Sheepdog to the mix you'd have a serious combat team (who would also have a few laughs.)
Like I said, I never was able to find any other books in the series. Its one of those things a dispassionately look for in used book stores.
David Drake is an odd writer. He has his own science fiction trips. But he also touched on a similar theme. He had some guy conquer the universe by capturing an ancient Roman Legion and forcing them to fight for him.
Ray guns are no match for iron, steel and precision it seems.
Cool stuff.
For some reason day dreaming about the destructive capabilities of our race makes a lot of insanity more sensible.

Now the rest of the day will be spent rejoicing in my puppy and the joy she brings into my life and the life of others. Three years old today. Three years and we're still inseparable. Still bicker all the time. Still need each other.
There's not much better than that. Not much better than a good dog. Together we are perfect, for each other and for others.

Posted by David at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)