February 28, 2006

Family History, Part Three.

We got a later start Tuesday than Monday, but it was still very productive. Grampy pulled out another box full of pictures, neatly separated into decades and marked in my father's writing (an example: "The Big 70's") featuring an envelope of shots from the 40's we hadn't looked at yet. We filled the better part of two more tapes with recollections and names, and Grampy even pulled out a photo of my great-great Grandfather.

He's doing really well with the photos. Even though many of the subjects are of his wife's family, he's able to pick out an average of 75% of the people involved. It's amazing to see my grandparents as 18-year-old kids vacationing in Budd Lake or at Point Pleasant; it's another thing entirely to finally understand the family tree and be able to pick out faces with some degree of success.

During one of the breaks, I decided to head back out into the wind and cold (it's hovering somewhere in the 20's this week) to shoot some pictures of the farm. First, I put the Jeep in 4-wheel and drove out to the west hedgerow, where two gravestones have stood among the weeds since the early 1800's. Then, I shot some pictures of the barn.

When my grandfather bought the house, he also bought the 53 acres it sits on and a gaggle of outbuildings, all of which are now gone. (Total cost in 1953: $6,000) The barn itself still stands, as a testament to its post-and-beam construction. I poked inside, making sure to stick to the sills so that I wouldn't fall through the rotted floorboards, and shot a bunch of pictures of the beams and joists. I didn't make it into the silo, which will probably stand long after the barn is gone—it was put up with ceramic brick at some point before my grandparents owned the farm, for a sum of $100. The wooden roof blew off in the last big windstorm of last year, but the structure is still intact. The milking shed my grandfather built fell down long ago, but I have pictures of it from ten years ago when the stanchions still stood and the windows looked out onto the back 40.

There are a wealth of pictures starring my aunts and uncles, and, of course, my father. He appears as a pudgy newborn with his mink-clad aunts and uncles and as a skinny college student home on break. I commandeered the kitchen table and spent the last two evenings scanning photos, everything at 600dpi and a select bunch at 1200dpi (the oldest and rarest, as well as my father's baby pictures) for a current total of 2.5GB of data.

Today is Ash Wednesday, so we're getting a late start after Grampy gets back from church. I'm going to use the afternoon after his nap to get another hour or so, and hopefully we'll make it to the 50's—which hasn't even been scratched yet.

Posted on February 28, 2006 10:47 PM | link to this entry | Comments (4)

February 27, 2006

Family History, Part Two.

My grandfather met us at the door this morning with a smile, and waited for us to carry all the gear inside. He led us into the living room, where he'd spread out the contents of three or four boxes on the loveseat, coffee table, and easy chair: scores of black and white pictures dating back to at least the turn of the century. On the back, where he could remember faces and dates, he pencilled in information in scratchy uppercase lettering. After getting the camera set up and the mics in place, we started rolling.

Grampy did very well on his first day. With a quick break for lunch, we shot about two and a half hours' worth of tape, which covered a thick pile of photos. It turns out that his side of the family shot a handful of pictures, while my grandmother's side took whole albums worth. As a result, we had to set a large number of material aside where he couldn't identify any of the subjects. (Sorry Grandma, we did our best!)

We did find a pile of photos my father has never seen, and I got a first look at my great grandfather—whose face is about the size of a pencil eraser in the photo. Grampy's going to look for his other photos of our namesake tomorrow, and I've been warned that he's not even warmed up yet. He also unrolled the family tree he's been working on, which dates back to 1854, and fittingly, is written in pencil on the back of a roll of wallpaper.

I was able to pull the video off the camera and onto my iBook with absolutely no problems—however, my iBook is having some kind of issue where it's missing approximately 30 GIGS of hard drive space. I mean, it's not there, and I have no idea where it went. I've cleaned every cache I can think of and burned off DVD's to free up space, and run diagnostics: No luck. I'm going to break down tomorrow and pick up an external hard drive to store everything until I can get time to troubleshoot the problem. I had to twist my mother's arm to get her to come to the local Target with me. The horror!

Update: From this link, I learned to do a simple thing:

Using the Finder’s Go to Folder feature (in the Go menu), look at the sizes of the contents of these folders, by pasting in these pathnames:
/Volumes

Simetimes, backup programs that cannot find an intended destination (or target) volume for a backup create a folder with the same name as the destination, and put the folder into the /Volumes directory. There are cases in which the entire startup volume has been backed up on itself, in a folder inside /Volumes. If the amount of missing space is about the size of your user folder, such a backup is likely to be the explanation. If you use Carbon Copy Cloner and have its preferences configured to create a backup on a schedule, and the intended destination volume is not mounted or is sleeping at the scheduled time, the backup is created in the /Volumes directory.

To check the size of the normally invisible /Volumes directory on the active startup volume, open a new Finder window. Select the startup volume in the list at the left, then choose column view (the one at the right of the three views). From the Finder’s Go menu, choose Go to Folder, and paste in:

/Volumes

The /Volumes directory becomes visible in the Finder; find its size by selecting it and typing Command I. My /Volumes directory is reported to be 12K.

I just found 48.6 gigs of space I didn't have before, from an old copy of Deja Vu, which was dumping stuff on a ghost volume of my old Powerbook. w00t!

(I could see the ghost drive from the Terminal but couldn't remember how to delete it because the name contained a space.)

Posted on February 27, 2006 11:49 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

Family History, Part One.

Much of my family history is, to me, a vague bunch of names and dates, people I don't have a whole lot of contact with, or never met in my life. I've gotten more interested in my kinfolk as I've gotten older—I think it's something that comes with the realization that one isn't 19 forever, and it hits sometime around the second year of mortgage payments. That time in life when one's friends are all recent parents, and the people we used to shut the bars down with are now on the PTA board.

My grandfather is nearing 90 years old. He's a retired housepainter. In his prime, he used to load a panel van full of supplies and drive from the Finger Lakes region of New York to Manhattan on Sunday night, at a time when highways didn't exist. He painted houses in the city from Monday until Friday. Then, he'd load the van back up and return home to his family, and spend the weekend repairing a 100-year-old farmhouse with no insulation or running water, only to turn around and do it again. He has always been a commanding sort of man, the kind of septuagenarian who could still kick ass and play a mean round of golf, even when his backswing was reduced from feet to inches. I remember wiry, ropy muscles in his arms, under a short-sleeve shirt, hoisting my cousins for a tour of the barn. I remember cookouts in the side yard, with he and my grandmother holding court by the Coca-Cola cooler, and cars lined up four deep in front of the house. I remember huddling around the heat registers in the bedroom upstairs, quietly listening to my aunts and uncles tell jokes in the smoky kitchen below. I remember my grandparents full of life, and that's how I'll always keep them in my memory.

The last time Jen and I visited with my grandfather, I realized how little I really know about him and my own family. I don't know if I've ever seen a picture of my namesake (I am the Fourth.) Travelling in Ireland last year, it became painfully clear to me that I don't know where my people came from, or when they arrived. I've spent a lot of time trying to help Jen's father get his family history archived, going as far as humping computer equipment to a reunion and scanning every photo album. I haven't spent nearly enough time with my own family, nor do I know nearly as much about us as I should.

I hatched a plot with my father a few months ago, and got his help in planning for a trip north to sit with my grandfather and talk to him about his family. He has shoeboxes full of photos and reels of 8mm film that may or may not have seen the light of day since the Truman administration. He has letters and pictures and most importantly, his memory to tell the stories behind the pictures, and put faces with names. And luckily for me, as I worked more on this plan, the pieces fell into place faster and easier that I could have hoped.

I mentioned the plan to a friend of mine, purely by chance—I was discussing scheduling for some freelance work. Graciously, he lent me the use of a very expensive professional digital video camera, two very expensive lavalier microphones, and a matching tripod. Junior and Senior will get mic'd, and my father will guide his father through the pictures, getting stories and faces and people straight while I scan and archive everything I possibly can.

We're heading up there at 9AM tomorrow, and I'm told Grampy has been telling everybody about it excitedly. He's been instructed by his daughters to shave, wear his good shirts, and behave himself. I'm as excited as he is—there are a ton of questions to ask, and I'm anxious to hear the answers.

Posted on February 27, 2006 11:32 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

February 24, 2006

Living Room Update.

This is the living room wall after two coats of mud, a coat of Kilz, and a coat of white paint. Go to Flickr for the full set-I'll be posting all of these on the houseblog when we get back from Annapolis this afternoon.

Posted on February 24, 2006 9:50 AM | link to this entry

February 23, 2006

Another Illustration, Minus Hoo-Ha.

I posted the entry for M on the Alphabet Project this morning. Rest assured, there's nothing showing. This one happened pretty fast (I started it at 6PM last night) and wrapped up quickly, with the exception of the hair and some minor details. I'm getting into a groove here, and it feels pretty good. Having the tools here at the house has made life much easier (the copier is working flawlessly, and having some white transfer paper makes the job 1000% easier.) Now, onto N. Any suggestions out there?

Posted on February 23, 2006 11:28 AM | link to this entry

February 22, 2006

Is This A Bad Thing Or Not?

Should I be concerned about the fact that our government is selling the ownership of six US ports to a company based in the United Arab Emirates? (One of the ports is here in Baltimore.) Bush is now distancing himself from the deal and the chairman of the DHS is threatening to veto it all the way up the line, but I don't know if this is simply political rhetoric or if it's actually a threat to this country's security. The 'Merican in me sez it's a bad idea, even if I don't actually believe that our docs would suddenly be swarmed with UAE nationals. However, I'm seriously concerned that we'd sell off control of such important gateways to the country to a foreign-based power with little or no fanfare (or any Congressional hearings...did you hear them talking about it? I sure didn't). Given the state of sheer panic this Administration likes to keep us at—which is really the only reason I can give for their second term—I'm surprised they tried to end-run this little deal around us, and I wonder who is making money on the deal (and why nobody's dug up that story yet.)

Update: NPR reports that the current nominee to run the U.S. Maritime Administration, David Sanborn, was a former top official of Dubai Ports World, the overseas company mentioned above. Also, the current Treasury Secretary, John Snow, was a former official of the CSX corporation, who sold their port interests for over a billion dollars, to Dubai Ports World.

Posted on February 22, 2006 4:00 PM | link to this entry

February 21, 2006

Mom, Dad, I'd Like You To Meet My Girlfriend Courtney.

Last week's entry for the Alphabet Project is live. Now, before you start saying things about my fascination with blondes and their underwear, I'll have you know that this week's entry is also a woman, she's not blonde, and you won't see her underwear. In fact, that would be kind of gross. (I'll also have you know that my wife suggested this one.)

Posted on February 21, 2006 7:35 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

February 20, 2006

Seeds of Change.

Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on pre-grown plants at the Friendly Neighborhood Home Superstore this year, Jen and I decided to start our own seed in the basement. Partially inspired by my father's success (the man can make plants grow from moon dust) and partially inspired by our lack of funds, we bought several mini-greenhouses, their accompanying heating mats, and a bagful of seed. Unfortunately, hubris clouded our better judgement, because after reviewing the space and height requirements for each species of plant we're starting, it became clear that we don't have the massive acreage needed to cultivate everything we bought.

For the record, we're putting in three species of tomatoes (we love our tomatoes here), eggplant (I'm a recent and avid convert), cucumber, pole beans, soybeans (edamame is the shiznit) and a Blackwater-sized army of marigolds and nasturtium to fend off the bugs. We also have an additional pile of pretty flowers to start in a few weeks for the other gardens.

Jen has spent hours poring over book after book, collating information about friendly plant species, best planting practices, soil composition, and harvesting tips. Even so, we spent the better part of Sunday planning out the timing—different seed goes in on different dates, sort of like following the Olympics or reading a complicated train schedule—we then plotted the size, shape, location and arrangement of our vegetable garden-to-be in the backyard for maximum sun exposure and drainage requirements. (Unfortunately, we are cursed with a sloping, shaded, and unevenly drained yard, with a minimum of southern exposure and a swamp in the corner.)

Last night, we put 72 seeds in to bake for six weeks under a grow lamp in the basement, and I transferred our schedule to iCal so that we're on track with the plants. Let's hope our efforts are not in vain.

Posted on February 20, 2006 10:44 AM | link to this entry

February 16, 2006

Humbled.

Well, in light of the fact that John K. (of Ren & Stimpy fame) has a weblog, and that he posted a few caricature sketches, and they make my pitiful attempts look childish and boring, I picked an "L" in the Alphabet Project. I have it almost ready to start. However, I'm helping a friend move tomorrow, and I'm helping someone else put stuff into storage on Saturday, so it may be a while before I get to this one. (Hint: it's a woman, and she's cool.)

Posted on February 16, 2006 7:04 PM | link to this entry

February 15, 2006

One Day Late...

valentine

Thanks to the lovely Mrs. Gatewood, we got a lovely valentine in the mail yesterday. I didn't get to post it yesterday because I was running around picking up the ingredients for Valentine's dinner. I made a shrimp, bean and spinach salad (with a dill viniagrette), olive tapenade on french bread, and paired it with a bottle of Red Truck wine (which I'd recommend—when the Bag of Money hits, I'll buy a case and stock it). I think Jen enjoyed the meal.

Posted on February 15, 2006 4:59 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

February 13, 2006

Again, Five Years Behind The Cultural Zeitgeist.

We just finished the first season of Six Feet Under last night. Apparently, this show came out in, like, 1999 or 2000 or something, and totally flew right over our heads. It could be that we don't have HBO and that I waited three years too long to open up a Netflix account, or it could be that I'm just a cheap bastard. Whatever the case, we love the series (or, at least, the first season of it.) I think that the first episode kind of took us by surprise, and then we were immediately hooked. Now, I've heard varying reviews of the next couple of seasons (and don't go telling us what happens, people), and I think we're looking forward to Season 2, but we've decided to take a break on it and switch over to something different. Like Trainspotting. And then, Shaun of the Dead.

We made it through the Baltimore Blizzard just fine, although heading out to see Miss Lis at Molly's did not happen—my apologies, Lis. There's about 12" of fresh snow down here in Catonsville, and for whatever reason shovelling it yesterday was a lot easier than the last snowfall we had—the last snowfall was that dry blustery kind that just blows all over the place, whereas this was the kind of snow that made big white drifts stick to the side of the house. I decided that cookies were in order if we were getting snowed in, and made them better than last time (something about packing the brown sugar.) The neighbor's son came out and helped me clear the driveway with his snowblower, and breathed whisky fumes downwind to me while we chatted. It's good to see some things don't change.

library

Finally, I inherited another iMac last week, this one a slot-loading model (the date stamped on the CD-ROM is October 1999), and slapped a 120GB drive into it on Saturday. Most of Sunday was spent watching HGTV and a freaky Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Duvall (WTF??!?!) and loading my backup music files onto the machine. Purple, the old reliable warhorse I've dragged from home to work and back again, will be retired, and the new Bondi Blue machine will take its place.

Posted on February 13, 2006 10:34 AM | link to this entry

February 9, 2006

Alphabet Update.

I posted the "K" entry in the Alphabet Project this morning (technically, this afternoon.) Let me know what you think.

Posted on February 9, 2006 12:13 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

February 8, 2006

Dear Internet.

Does anybody have a basic sewing machine my wife can borrow? I promise she'll give it back.

(she's looking at the chair in our basement and thinking about reupholstering it.)

Posted on February 8, 2006 4:04 PM | link to this entry | Comments (7)

February 2, 2006

Peep This.

I just posted the entry for J on the Alphabet Project. Now, I have to go press my pants for a client meeting tomorrow morning, and pack an oh-shit bag for another client whose laptop just blew up.

But first, I'm treating my beautiful wife and I to some Ghirardelli hot chocolate.

Posted on February 2, 2006 9:38 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

Wrestling With Apples.

I know I promised weekly updates to the Alphabet Project, but I haven't been able to get "J" done (well, actually, off the ground) this week. I spent the better part of Tuesday at a client's house, and yesterday I fought Darwin Streaming Server to a draw, attempting to simply hook up a streamed video for a client. Little did I know that Quicktime's method of streaming is somewhat arcane, the directions are oblique, the tools confusing, and the results questionable. I'd blame Apple (shakes fist in the direction of Cupertino) but as far as I can tell, they open-sourced the thing years ago and it's sort of been languishing ever since. (Exhibit A: dig that Garamond Condensed in that last hyperlink. That's so 1999.) Along the way, I booted up Keynote for the first time and fought with it to build a pair of presentations for a client meeting tomorrow morning. My review: I'd say it's pretty, and it works well, but there are some major changes I'd make to the interface and the functionality to extend the program and reduce frustration.

One bright spot: We hit the library yesterday, and I scored a bunch of new (well, new in 2005) music: some Broken Social Scene, some Ted Leo, some Sigur Ros, some Wu-Tang. I also scored a copy of Charles Burns' new hardback, called Black Hole. I'd just have to say, damn. Remember reading Big Baby back in the day and being sort of freaked out by the bugs and weird people and stuff? Now imagine a story about growing up in the 1970's and a bunch of teenagers who have this strange virus that mutates them in different ways—and the way they get the virus is through sexual contact. Add in the social pressures of being in high school, first love, and lots of drugs, and stir. The book is absolutely beautiful. The pages are heavy, the printing is perfect, and his illustrations are incredible. I started it at 11:30 and finished it at 1:15, completely riveted. Check it out. And, while I'm at it, props to my local library for carrying it.

P.S. New illustration coming this evening—I've got it laid out and ready to go.