« February 2006 | Main | April 2006 »

March 31, 2006

Jen's New Toy.

This morning, as we sat on the couch, sipping coffee and discussing our monetary situation, the doorbell rang. The FedEx guy had dropped off a little package on our doorstep and waved as he drove off:

It was no larger than a breadbox, but once she opened it, the genius of good package design was revealed:

She ordered the Core Duo model with 2 gigs of RAM and the maximum hard drive—essentially, the pimpin'est Mini money will buy. I'm absolutely green with envy.

This is going to be a HUGE leap for her. She's been using a circa 1999 blue and white 400mhz G3 tower, and it's showing its age.

Posted on March 31, 2006 9:31 AM | link to this entry

March 29, 2006

It's The New Style.

Last week (or was it two weeks ago?) Jen and I hit a thrift store not too far from our house on a lazy sunday. In that store, nestled among the racks of threadbare sportcoats and flasher trenchcoats, was this little red gem from the era of leisure suits and platform heels. It's a size or two too big for me, but the stitching, color and fabric are right on.

I have no idea who Tamari is, or where they come from, but they do make a damn fine coat.

I am nothing if not a coat whore; Ask my lovely wife and she'll tell you I have more coats than Imelda had shoes. But I couldn't pass this one up.

Posted on March 29, 2006 12:56 PM | link to this entry | Comments (3)

March 27, 2006

Reading Material.

From the introduction of Imperial Grunts, by Robert D. Kaplan:

Imperialism is but a form of isolationism, in which the demand for absolute, undefiled security at home leads one to conquer the world, and in the process to become subject to all the world's anxieties. ...By the time an imperial reality becomes truly manifest, it is a sign that the apex of empire is at hand, with a gradual retreat more likely than fresh conquests.

(The first sentence is attributed to Erich Gruen, from The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome. )

There is a lot to learn from this book, both from the civilian noncombatant side and from the political realist's side. I'm attempting to do some illustrations for this book as a self-commissioned project, and I find the conflicting messages it contains hard to boil down into digestible images. One one hand, the special teams we place in foreign countries (and there are a lot more than you think there are, in places you never imagined) are training indigenous armies, helping the local populations with health and sanitation projects, and providing security for government officials. On the other hand, they are severely limited by the Rules of Engagement to certain numbers of advisors, specific locations of operation, methods of training, and ability to engage in combat, which limits their abilities to influence real change. While these limitations are debatable on a case-by-case basis, the idea that narcotrafficking in places like Columbia could be severely curtailed by a 6-month field operation by one Alpha team (suggested by an SF operative in the book) is a tempting one.

That fundamental reality, in contrast to the wild west atmosphere of Mongolia experienced by the Alpha teams stationed there, is a jarring one. What I'm attempting to convey is a sense of ability and professionalism—I don't think any of these soldiers is bloodthirsty or evil, even if I might not agree with the policy that put them where they are—with the underlying sense of frustration I feel from the stories they tell. These are guys who live in a storage container inside barbed-wire fences in 105° heat for months at a time, in constant danger of assassination, who then immunize the local population and help dig wells for their crops. It's also fascinating to read about the newer generation of non Vietnam-veteran soldiers complain about the hangovers still lingering from that war—and realize that those lessons are important. I'd like to believe that the initial U.S. involvement in Vietnam (a handful of Special Forces advisors to the democratic government in the early '60's) was not begun with the eventual ramp-up in mind, but I also see increased combatant-level involvement in foreign countries as the slippery slope it is. Finally, it's refreshing and humbling to read about the individual soldiers, who are handpicked because of their abilities, intelligence, and maturity—a far cry from the Rambo/loose cannon propaganda we Americans are fed daily. As mass-market entertainment, the solutions on the current TV show "The Unit" are tidy 45-minute happy endings, but they reflect a childish, immature view of real world problems.

I'm only halfway through the book now, but I'd recommend it for anyone who is interested in the way America is attempting to fight smaller wars on multiple fronts in the 21st century, based on the idea that a few men with the right ideas can force a major turn of events:

The notion that vast historical forces could be tipped by the right individuals exerting pressure in the right spot has always offered an attractive antidote to fatalism.

* * *

I've also been working on self-commissioned illustrations for an article that ran in the New Yorker a month or so back, about the Administration's ignorance and subjugation of science for its own purposes. The New York Times magazine ran an article a few months ago on the same subject, and it's something that resonated with me.

This is my first tentative set of steps back into the conceptual pool, and it's going slowly and painfully. My brain was wired pretty well when I was in college to think editorially, but those muscles are weak and puny now. I've been hitting up against this wall for a week now, and while I have some things resolved I still can't make the whole thing work correctly.

But now I've spent enough time writing and not enough time thinking. Back to work.

Posted on March 27, 2006 2:17 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

March 25, 2006

Friday-Saturday.

Between backing up Jen on a large design job (suffering computer issues that warranted the purchase of a new Core Duo Mac Mini on Wednesday) and various other jobs for my clients, this week slipped past rather quickly. However, I spent part of this afternoon and the majority of the evening working on the Q entry for the Alphabet Project. I also collected a small but tardy invoice from last December, which will hopefully go towards an upgrade of my 1999-vintage PC. I'm looking at a refurbed Dell from a local vendor, trying to save a couple hundred bucks for a business class machine, but my father's experience with his Dell has me wondering what vendor is best. What do you folks out there recommend?

Posted on March 25, 2006 12:31 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

March 24, 2006

Alternate Future.

Sioux leader vows to open Planned Parenthood Clinic. I have a vision of the future, and it goes something like this: Our government, backed by lobbying groups, and with a ruling of the Supreme Court, is able to overturn Roe V. Wade and ban abortion in the United States. Because nature always finds a way (and our current government doesn't value science or education), women will still get pregnant. Indian reservations across the country will open Planned Parenthood clinics on Reservation land, right next to the casinos, cheap filling stations, and nontaxed cigarette and liquor stores, so we pious, Puritan Americans can take care of all our vices with one car trip.

Seriously, right on for the Sioux leader mentioned the story. The reasoning behind the ban, and the details, are just incomprehensible to me.

...There were, however, no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. [Governor Mike Rounds]' actions, and the comments of State Senators like Bill Napoli of Rapid City, SD, set of a maelstrom of protests within the state. Napoli suggested that if it was a case of "simple rape," there should be no thoughts of ending a pregnancy. (via)

I don't think this measure will stand in court, which is good, but the fact that it actually passed is a sobering and chilling portent of the future. (Link to donation information in comments)

''If they are going to outlaw abortions [they should] put more money into sex education and pregnancy prevention. It's fine to tell people to abstain from sex. Adult people in our country expect young people to abstain when they don't abstain,'' she said.

I couldn't agree more. Abstinence needs to be followed up with honest, factual education and prevention. Birth control needs to be available and inexpensive. Simple solutions do not lend themselves to complicated problems.

Posted on March 24, 2006 10:23 AM | link to this entry

March 22, 2006

Boy, I Wish I Had $4,000.

Classic BMW for sale on Craigslist. I don't have a motorcycle license, but this is the bike I'd ride if I did.

Update: I'll link you to a Google image search of some pretty bikes. And another link to the BMW Airheads Club, a site about all things air-cooled.

Posted on March 22, 2006 12:58 PM | link to this entry

March 21, 2006

OS X Font Resources.

We're having some issues with our collection of fonts this week, so I've done some research. Here's a list of handy font reference material:

Font Doctor, for fixing conflicts and repairing bad fonts. So far, our experience has been good. If it's doing what it says it's doing, we have approximately one BILLION fonts with conflicting ID numbers. It's a nice little app, and it's busily humming away while I type this.

How Fonts Really Work In OS X and Font Fatigue: Pruning Excess Fonts in Mac OS X go into detail (for 10.2) on where fonts live in OS X and how to deal with them. Both were written several years ago, but I think the information is probably relevant for today as well.

Font Locations, via Apple. Additionally, Using and Managing Fonts In OS X are also 10.2 specific, but full of good information. (Who knew that fonts live in six different places on OS X? This is not normally a problem until you load 10,000+ fonts into Suitcase—then you're going to have some headaches.)

Finally, a Apple Forums article which goes into exhaustive detail about pruning fonts and then how to reset your system (essentially, prune the system, trash your font manager's preferences, and reload everything) so that Quark doesn't shoot you the finger when you try to use Helvetica. This is good information.

I'm still giving Linotype's Font ExplorerX a thumbs-up, even though we've had some conflicts between its auto-activation feature and inDesign, forcing a retreat to Suitcase to get some things to work. I'm thinking this is an overall font conflict problem and not a Font ExplorerX problem, but stay tuned.

Posted on March 21, 2006 2:09 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

March 20, 2006

Working Hard For The Despot.

Between a meeting in Columbia that went on longer than I bargained (and went better than we hoped), various computer woes here at the Lockardugan Command Center, and a surprise obituary posting for a pseudo-client this evening, I didn't get to do anything frivolous today. So tonight I posted the P entry for the Alphabet Project to make myself feel like I got something accomplished.

In more exciting news, my good friend Rob talked a little sense into my head this weekend. He asked why I was waiting around to put all my money into the body of the Scout and not just fixing those parts that are broken and enjoying my truck? (Rob is the man who talked sense into my head about finally taking out a home equity loan and having the kitchen done professionally. So when he talks, I listen.)

I had to stop and think about this for a minute. I've been assuming, because the "B" pillars are all so shot, that I can't drive my truck anymore because the doors won't open, and that I need to focus all my energy on raising the money for a new fiberglas tub. Rob's point was simple: Why open the doors at all? He suggested fixing the engine problems, having a new exhaust put on, pulling the top off, and driving it as an antique, which avoids any of the inspection/emission issues I'd face otherwise. This suddenly made a ton of sense to me, and I wondered why I wasn't thinking like this before.

So, to clean up the cobwebs in my head and organize the plan, here's the task list for the Scout:

• Drop the steel fuel tank and replace it with a new poly tank. ($175)


• Replace the dead battery ($50)


• Clean out the fuel lines/filters


• Replace the plugs, wires, filter and oil


• Install a brand new exhaust (major ducats)


• Resolve the current registration issues (it's suspended because of emissions)

Maybe, with a lot of scrimping and saving, I can get the Scout back on the road this year.

Posted on March 20, 2006 8:44 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

March 17, 2006

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Some asshole rear-ended the Jeep last night on Beechwood Ave. and drove off, leaving a pile of headlight shards and a pool of coolant fluid behind. They didn't leave a note. Now I can't open the tailgate, because the bumper got pushed up over the lip of the hatch. The cops have filed a report (disinterestedly) and the insurance company has the claim on record.

People suck.

Posted on March 17, 2006 10:45 AM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

March 16, 2006

Stoopit

Comments are now fixed. I forgot the </form> tag in the search field, so whenever someone tried to leave a comment, they got search results. Not that anybody left a comment to tell me or anything.

Posted on March 16, 2006 3:59 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

A Little Video Research.

Last night I refocused some of my ADD into working with the images I scanned in New York. Because I scanned them at such a high resolution, I wanted to know if I need to reduce the image size or change the file format to work with the program I've got (iMovie 5.1). Doing a little reading, I found some advice online that scared me away from using iMovie to do the photo montage work altogether. Apparently when still images are exported to DVD from iMovie, the program throws out every other line of resolution so that the images show up onscreen without flicker. This obviously tosses half the image quality of the photo, which is less than optimal. I was also impressed but not excited about the photo manipulation tools in iMovie, so I followed some other advice and found two applications that look promising: Still Life and Photo to Movie.

Still Life is a nice little application, set up like a Quicktime window with a little timeline below. You can add "shots", essentially keyframes for pans and zooms, and add in fades. It also allows for the layering of music tracks, although I haven't fooled with this at all.

Photo To Movie is a step above Still Life; It opens up with a timeline view at the bottom and features adjustable panning and zooming, something iMovie and Still Life lack. It also has an adjustable background color, something I couldn't find in Still Life—which makes using scanned photos much easier. Best of all, it took about 3 minutes to be up and running in this application. In a half-hour, I had four photos positioned, panned and scanned, titled (no small feat with multiple subjects in each picture) and ready to go. I'm most likely going to spend the $50 on the full featured version of this program after a DVD test later next week—I'm putting Photo To Movie up against iMovie in a head-to-head duel.

Posted on March 16, 2006 9:11 AM | link to this entry

March 15, 2006

Wow, This Is Awesome...

Make a super-simple light tent. I've wanted to make a huge one of these for about two years now, and this is exactly what I want without the complicated plan I'd developed myself. As a matter of fact, I happen to have two large empty boxes downstairs ready for this project.

Posted on March 15, 2006 1:19 PM | link to this entry

March 14, 2006

A Fresh Perspective.

You may have noticed the boat up top is gone. And it's a little less blue around here. While I had some time between projects, I decided to put a new look together for the site here that's less oppressive, cluttered, and, well..blue. Obviously there are some things to be worked out with the templates, but overall it seems to be working pretty well.

Now, I have to wrestle with an install of Movabletype 3.2, which didn't go so smoothly last time. Cross your fingers for me.

Oh, and the search function is wonky. Stay tuned.

Update: Looks like I broke something; the comments on this entry are busted. It doesn't seem to actually be writing the individual HTML file...

Update update: I left a few small tags out when I rebuilt the templates. I put them back in, and I'm testing now... Yeah, that was it. One small tag at the top of each page, and MT wasn't writing new pages for each entry (or updating current entries, for that matter.) If the following tag is left out:

<a href="<$MTBlogURL$>" accesskey="1">

MT won't write the various files correctly (or, at all, unless an entire site rebuild is performed.)

Posted on March 14, 2006 5:54 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

March 13, 2006

Alphabet Update.

The entry for "O" is online at the Alphabet Project. You may not be able to get a word in edgewise, and don't be surprised if you get told to shut up!

Posted on March 13, 2006 10:23 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

Potential For Catastrophe.

When I was around the age of eight or nine, gas and heating oil got really expensive. I didn't know about the oil crisis, of course, but the reality made its way into our lives in different places. My father gave up driving his monstrous green Ford station wagon (a Country Squire, if I remember correctly) and started a carpool at work, which meant we had a monstrous green Ford van in the driveway instead—the kind with seventeen rows of hard vinyl seats and a minimum of passenger comfort. My mother's '66 Buick convertible stayed mostly in the garage.

We also had a woodstove in our basement that suddenly started getting used. He may have had it installed just for the purpose of heating the house; I can't remember clearly. Whatever the case, one of our new chores became wood-hauling on crisp fall mornings. In addition to his other Ford vehicles, my father had a (monstrous, green) Ford F350 stakebody truck, something I'd wager very few other dads parked in their driveways. Besides doing duty as a moving vehicle, frequent trips to the lumberyard (I come by this home renovation shit honestly), and hauling our camper in a homebuilt method which voided any manufacturer's warranty, we used the truck on weekends to carry lumber back to the house. At some point, being the thrifty man he is, he answered an ad in the paper for a chainsaw and came home with the first model McCulloch built in 1939. It featured an engine the size of a dishwasher, and roared to life in the garage with the subtlety of a steam locomotive. He had a deal with someone who owned acres of forest, and let him cut dead wood off the property for firewood. He'd pack us kids into the cab of the Ford, heave the dishwasher chainsaw onto the bed of the truck, and off we'd go for an exciting afternoon of hauling wood through the underbrush.

Time is fluid as a child of eight or nine, so I don't remember exactly how long we were out in the woods with him on these trips. It could have been hours, days or weeks. I do remember countless trips back and forth from the truck towards the screaming, gnashing sound of the dishwasher chainsaw, finding him sweating with the effort of holding 500 lbs. of bucking pig iron four feet off the ground. When we'd carried enough wood (and my father had worn his arms into useless jelly), we'd pack up the truck and head for home.

Evenings included my favorite chore of all, the nightly trip to the woodpile in the dark with a wheelbarrow. I'd lift the tarp, sure that I'd be consumed by rabid, angry snakes or raccoons, and fill the barrow with split wood, (He must have split the wood when we were sleeping, because I don't remember that part) then bring it up to the basement window to heave it in to my Dad, who stacked it against the wall next to the hot stove. Then, I'd return out to the woodpile and get another load. In this quaint but character-building way, our family rode out the oil crisis of the late 70's.

I gained a huge amount of respect for my Dad this weekend when I finished cutting the final section of elm tree in our backyard on Saturday. I'd rented a 14' Stihl chainsaw after a frustrating failure to revive Dave's on Friday night, and fired it up for the first time with a healthy sense of apprehension. This was no dishwasher, but the potential to self-mutilate was still as great. The first few cuts were tentative, meek stabs at the wood, but after a half-hour of familiarity, I was splitting fat chunks of the elm into bite-sized half-rounds for lining the garden. When I'd finished that part, I cut the other sections down into quarters for splitting in the fall (everything is still soaking wet.)

By the end of the day, my arms were tired, my back was singing Ave Maria, and only the timely intervention by my wife with an afternoon meal kept me from passing out next to the woodpile. But the majority of the felled tree is now off the lawn, and I made it through the day without severing a leg.

Posted on March 13, 2006 9:34 PM | link to this entry | Comments (5)

March 10, 2006

Holy Crap! How Did I Miss This?!?

Story by Marc L. Songini
MARCH 10, 2006
Maryland House votes to oust Diebold machines

The state of Maryland stands poised to put its entire $90 million investment in Diebold Election Systems Inc. touch-screen e-voting systems on ice because they can't produce paper receipts.

The state House of Delegates this week voted 137-0 to approve a bill prohibiting election officials from using AccuVote-TSx touch-screen systems in 2006 primary and general elections.

Healey said the law would require that the machines provide a paper trail before the 2008 elections or Diebold would risk losing its contract with the state.

The bill also requires that any leased optical-scan system be equipped to accommodate the needs of handicapped voters, to ensure compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act statutes.

Could this be true? Could my shredded, battered, naiive faith in our elected officials be saved?

Posted on March 10, 2006 11:42 PM | link to this entry

Weather, Beaten.

The thermometer outside the atrium window reads 92° this morning, probably because it's older than I am and in the direct sunlight. Officially, the temperature is 68°, which means I'm going to put on some shorts and spend at least half the day outside in the yard. Our good friend Dave, who has been doing triple-good-friend duty, lent me his chainsaw, late of Louisiana, for some down-home woodcutting fun this afternoon. I found an owner's manual online with instructions on gas mixture and chain tension, and I'll probably pick up a new chain for the heck of it.

Part of the Great 2006 Garden Experiment is to plant several species of tomato, bean, and vegetable in a 25'x10 plot towards the back of the lawn. Instead of buying expensive wood to edge the plot, I'm going to cut thin slices of the remaining felled tree out back and use this to keep the soil in place.

We seem to be having problems keeping our seedlings alive downstairs, which is troubling both of us. The cucumbers started almost immediately, got huge and started pressing up against the plastic of the container, so we opened the container and most of them died off. The tomatoes have proved to be heartier, but we're at a loss for how we should deal with the loss of our entire crop. There's a house in our neighborhood owned by a man who runs a window installation business, and he often puts old casement windows out on his lawn for people to take. I'm going to grab a couple that I saw today and build a larger coldframe out of scrap wood to see if that helps our crops.

Posted on March 10, 2006 9:47 AM | link to this entry

March 9, 2006

Paul's Liquor

Posted on March 9, 2006 5:02 PM | link to this entry

March 7, 2006

Alphabet Update.

I posted the entry for "N" on the Alphabet Project this evening: You'll recognize Big Poppa from his unique eyes.

Update: as of 12:14 EST, my other server is kaput. AGAIN. Stand by while we address the technical difficulties.

Update Update: as of 1:48 EST, It's back online.

Posted on March 7, 2006 9:25 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

March 6, 2006

Houseblog Update.

You'll note that there's a new entry on the long-ignored houseblog, where I start detailing the changes we're making in our living room.

Posted on March 6, 2006 4:50 PM | link to this entry

Living Room Paint Update.

This weekend saw the addition of a new color to the Lockardugan palette, and the beginning of a shop class project.

All of the baseboards have been pulled out (with the exception of the one behind the radiator) and walls have been patched. At some point I'll get the time to run wiring and fabricate new baseboards (and we'll get the money to have them hooked up), and we can close up the walls. In the meantime, I started building a frame around our shitty looking fireplace and tacking up cardboard to block out how large the cover will be.

I'm going to follow the pseudo-Federalist/Colonial woodworking in the rest of the house and keep the cover as simple as possible. When it's done, the exposed brick will get painted with hi-temp flat black and the wood will get painted with the gloss white we have on the rest of the woodwork.

Posted on March 6, 2006 4:39 PM | link to this entry

Family History: Wrap-Up.

From a best-guess estimate, I've got about 800 photos scanned from my grandfather's archive. This includes some (but, tantalizingly, not all) of the oldest family photos in his posession. The total haul is about 5.11GB of data. Some of those are dupes- I did the highest-resolution scans I could of the most important and rarest photos in the collection, which means that Thomas, my great-great grandfather, is preserved in ones and zeroes at 1200dpi for the long-term future.

I've got about eight hours of videotape of my grandfather reviewing his collection, some with and some without my father helping to draw stories out of him. He seemed to want to get to the latest photos immediately, and we had to explain to him several times that we were more interested in his earlier history, the stuff nobody knows about. Once he warmed up, he was rattling off the names of people who had us stumped. It was interesting to see where his memory was sketchy, though—the names of dogs, for example: On the farm, they had a long succession of barn animals with names like Soupy, Shnooky, and Pumpkin. It seemed like he identified every dog from every decade as "Judy", an interchangeable and unknown (to me) mutt who died before my time.

Based on my experience, I have a few recommendations for anybody tackling this project in the future:

• Bring a scanner and scan everything and anything you can. Scan the fronts and the backs of the photos-often times there's better stuff on the back than on the front.


• Have someone helping you draw the stories out of your relative. If a memory pops up about a particular photo (and you'll see it on their face when it does) ask them about the place, time, people who were there, and how it made them feel. You'll be amazed at what they remember, and that will lead you to more questions.


• Your relative may start out slow, but once you engage them, it's amazing how much they look forward to the process. My grandfather is 90, and I think he was thrilled to have us talking to him about his history.


• Block out a lot of time. I had five days, and they went by quickly. Between filming four hours a day and scanning at night, I was exhausted at the end of each day.

On the way out of town, I stopped back in and showed him my photos of all the work done on the house since we moved in—something to make the housepainter in his blood proud. He peered into the LCD of my laptop as I took him through the rooms, asked questions about the work I'd done—clucking when I mentioned repairing plaster, and shaking his head at the hallway cieling—and nodded approvingly when I was done.

I've always felt that I never spent enough time with my grandparents. Because we were geographically the second-furthest grandkids from their house, visits in the summer and for holidays were usually quick and over before they'd started. Because I'm a weird half-social misanthrope, I have a difficult time keeping relationships strong and fresh, often letting the time between contact with important people in my life stretch on far too long. As a result, I always felt like an outsider at family gatherings, like the kid who stood at the back of the school dance and watched everyone else have a good time.

This visit changed that for the better, I think—not only because I recorded some of our family's history, but because I began to change the way I see my family. Seeing my relatives in their younger years somehow made me feel closer to each of them, like I was watching over them as they grew up and formed families of their own. Instead of feeling like an outsider, I felt like I was more of a part of their lives, even if they were frozen in time on a piece of paper, especially as my grandfather rattled off names and told me which house they stood in front of and whose wedding they were attending. One of the resolutions I made for this year was to be a better son, husband, and friend in my relationships, and I made this trip the kickoff of that promise to my family. Spending time with my father and his father (and the rest of my family, between scanning pictures, ha-ha) meant a lot to me, and I think it meant a lot to each of them. More importantly, it wasn't that hard to do. The hard part is in the follow-up, and that's an ongoing process that's going to take a lot of discipline, something I don't have a lot of.

As I was leaving, I noticed the wind had blown the trail of my footprints in the snow away, as if I'd never been there at all. I'm glad I got the time to spend with my grandfather, and that he got to know me a little bit better; My next project is going to be collating the photos I have with the information I've got and try to put something together for him to share with his family—and to be there when he does.

Posted on March 6, 2006 1:55 PM | link to this entry

March 5, 2006

There Are No Second Acts In Hollywood.

The guy that won Best Screenplay for Crash (and Million Dollar Baby) is also the guy who created and wrote Walker, Texas Ranger.

Posted on March 5, 2006 11:26 PM | link to this entry

March 2, 2006

Update From the Kitchen Table.

Well, it's snowing like a sonofabitch up here in New York State. Originally my plan was to get on the road tomorrow morning, but I may be delayed on account of weather. In the last hour or so, half of Lake Erie just fell on my parents' backyard in the form of fluffy white powder. My black Jeep is a gray smudge in the parking lot up back. At least there's cold beer in the basement.

While I've been up here, I've had some technical difficulties. If you've been trying to email my alter ego, it looks like the server shat the bed, so I'd use the idiotking address listed on the right there until further notice.

In local CNY news, a guy who owns a "massage therapy studio" here in my parents' town just got popped for pouring his own poop down a floor drain in the Men's bathroom of the county courthouse. Repeatedly. It seems this crackpot individual, who is arguably not dealing with a full deck, has been doing this for some time. He lives in a permanently beached sailboat north of town, and writes long rambling letters to the editor of the local paper about matters random and bizarre. The town has apparently been giggling over this incident, and the aforementioned editor pointed out a few troubling questions: Why not dump it in the woods surrounding your house? Why not use the toilet instead of the floor drain? and most importantly, why carry it in an ice chest (the reason somebody finally noticed and called the cops)? An amusing postscript to the story is that the local sheriff's last name is Outhouse.

Posted on March 2, 2006 1:11 PM | link to this entry

Family History, Day Four.

Yesterday we got two solid hours of Grampy's time on tape. He went to mass in the morning, so we got about a half-hour in before lunch and another half-hour afterwards, making our way through the envelope marked "the 60's". I left so that he could take his nap and returned to the house with a pile of photos to scan, most of which I got done. We headed back up at 3:30 to continue with both envelopes from the 70's, and as a bonus, we got about fifteen minutes of Grampy talking to my Dad about his parents and grandparents.

I'm heading back over today to talk about the balance of the photos, which consist mainly of the 80's and anything else we didn't get to. I'm going to try to power through that relatively quickly, and then get back to just talking with Grampy about anything pre-1950 I can think of while the tape is rolling. Then, one more evening of scanning, and we'll call this expedition done.

Fuck, I missed Lost last night. What happened?

Posted on March 2, 2006 8:06 AM | link to this entry | Comments (4)